Synchronize
by Crystallinequill
Summary: It sang, deep in the Cores, a song of unity and power that wasn't there before, older than the universe itself. Deep in Wavern's mind a whisper that ever so slowly grew until she was sure everyone else could hear it too. "Follow me" And it all started with one little thing: synchronization.
1. Prologue

Drago knows he's fighting a losing battle.

The unfortunate high-end street that got ripped out of the ground to be used as a battlefield now lays in ruins around them. More than one block of offices caved under Naga's energy pulses or under his own fireballs.

Smoke curls around both him and Dan, the wind that should have been blowing it away suspiciously absent. Smoke is practically scented air to a Pyrus Bakugan, but Dan's already coughing so hard he's tearing up on his shoulder. Not good.

Naga's footfalls crunch on the pavement, cracking the street as he advances. He flashes both of them an arrogant snarl, fangs glinting in the midday sun.

"Give up" he calls. "You, Drago, are but a distraction. I will admit you are a fearsome warrior, but even you are no match for the Silent Core on your own." His expression shifts into a mockery of a smile, but bloodlust still dances in his eyes. "Convince my dear sister to surrender the Infinity Orb and I will let you and your little Human live."

"Liar!" Wavern shouts. She's still standing where Naga let her go, flaring her wings to make herself look bigger. No, not to look bigger. To be the bigger target.

Naga turns towards her menacingly, a low growl rumbling in his chest. Drago has never been more aware of the veins bulging out on Naga, pulsing faster in tune with the Silent Core. He wishes he had never seen it.

"Gather your courage Drago." she says, shivering in fear but still refusing to move, even as Naga flares his wings as if to fly over to her. "And remember what you told me."

He does remember. He had made a promise he had hoped never to keep, but what other option does he have now?

"Drago!" Dan's voice cuts through Drago's roiling emotions. He looks down to his partner.

"I have an idea" Says Dan, pointing behind them. Drago knows that behind his goggles Dan has the same look he had when he challenged Masquerade to battle a second time, where he knows exactly what he can lose and is determined to not let that happen.

The plan itself is vague and clearly born of desperation, but it's the best he could come up with. Drago will be damned before he gives up so easily.

"Stalling for time, are we?" Naga charges up a negative energy blast between his claws. "I expected better"

Drago breathes in and stares straight into Naga's eyes with every scrap of courage he can gather. Power builds up in his throat, fire crackling through it in a familiar way. He lets loose the blast, which rockets past Naga and ... hits the invisible wall placed around the battlefield.

Naga laughs cruelly and hard, energy blast spluttering out between his fingers. "Is that all?" He asks with his shredded voice, but Drago isn't paying attention to him anymore.

Wavern is still for a second, confused and waiting for a strike that never came. The expression on her face is wrong, Drago notices with a pit in his stomach, like it isn't hers at all. A stranger in a familiar body.

"COME ON!" Dan shouts to Wavern, who snaps out of her daze to stare at him. "WE CAN'T DO THIS ALONE AND YOU KNOW IT!"

The realization flashes through her eyes. She shakes her head and smiles. In earnest she taps into the power of the Infinity Core. Cracks form where Drago has struck the wall shine like auroras, widening slowly.

Naga notices it, and puts his hand up to counteract his sister's power. The cracks stop widening, but they refuse to heal over.

As a burst of green wind impacts the wall from the other side and just like that, the stalemate is broken. The wall shatters.

The entire field plummets towards the earth, so fast that the three bakugan float up like they're weightless.

"Whoohoo!" Dan cheers from Drago's shoulder and he can't help the smile that curls at his lips in response, wild with relief. "Alright! Let's kick this freak back where he belongs!"

"I couldn't have said it better myself." Drago spreads his wings as the rest of the Battle Brawlers jump, fly and scramble into the battle.

Naga is suddenly on the defensive, blocking and dodging attacks from all six of them. It is obvious from the start that fighting six-to-one is a recipe for chaos. Everyone's in danger not only from Naga's enraged fighting but also from friendly fire. Yet, it's working. Naga doesn't have enough time to stop and tap into the power of the Silent Orb, and without it his fighting skills are next to none.

Hal-G notices this and raises the staff in his hand, which is immediately stolen by a smirking Chan Lee. His undignified screeching is something she'll laugh about later, for sure. (He doesn't know Alice's grandfather well enough to guess if he would be embarrassed, amused or disgusted by the display. He hopes he gets a chance to ask.)

"Wavern!" Joe jumps onto her shoulder from the sidewalk. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine now." She smiles. "We must not let this opportunity go to waste!" She flaps her wings and fires off a stream of energy into Naga's wing.

"You traitor!" he screams.

Preyas chooses that exact moment to punch him in the snout with a cry of "Look who's talking!".

Naga lets loose a blast of negative energy that sends him and Marucho flying, just in time for Gorem's hammer to hit Naga right in the back.

Tigrerra and Hydranoid decided to attack at the same time, narrowly escaping each other's claws when Naga jumps up to dodge them both.

A crowd's starting to form when most Bakugan and their Humans realize that the battle's no longer cut off, and the number of fighters is steadily increasing. Most of them focus on not letting Naga get away, forming a loose barrier around the fight. Drago's immensely grateful they decided to heed Joe's words.

"Ability Activate: Puppeteer!" Screams Shuji, and purple strings shot out from the claws of a Darkus Mantris to bind Naga and cut off his escape.

Naga lets out an unholy screech that has most people flinching. On the other hand, Mantris seems pretty pleased with its handiwork. He attaches the strings to the ground and scurries back to his Human.

"Everybody stand back!" Drago calls, and all of the Brawlers gather behind him. It is almost over, Drago realizes. One final attack is all they need. He will make it count, Drago thinks, as power begins mounting inside him.

Wavern watches from the side. Her brother is a wreck, holes in his wings, multiple broken teeth, and she is struck with how different they've become. She would have never considered suicide before. He never wanted to rule anything before all this. Wavern knew she had to make things to go back to how it was before. Before they both decided the other wasn't worth protecting anymore.

"Brother, please." She whispered to him. "Please give up. They'll kill you."

He laughs, a hollow and broken chuckle. He's bathed in a blinding light as the Brawler's combined strength began to coalesce into one final blast.

"Let them."

Dextra, the power of all six Attributes combined, is the strongest attack any Bakugan can call upon. Yet it had an immense downside; once begun, it could not be stopped. No matter what anyone did. They were bound by their own power to continue, locked in a trance.

Wavern knew this.

Nevertheless, she doesn't flinch as she places herself in between her brother and the attack. She doesn't turn around and heed the shouts of the crowd, calling for her to get out of the way. She only looks at her brother in the eye, and holds out her hand. Naga almost bats it away.

"I didn't have to die." Wavern said, as she felt the power of Dextra searing her back. "So neither do you."

The moment the energy evaporated the Puppeteer strings, Naga grabs her hand and channels as much Silent energy into his hand as he can. She does the same.

In unison, the Bakugan compress the rainbow ball of energy, aim and fire at the two siblings.

It never hits them.

Wavern and her brother swim in a bubble of pure power, which now thrums in their veins. The power outside of them dissolves, the Dextra used to create it now gone, but the power inside them sits untouched. They are both intact. They are both _changed._

"Wy...vern?" Drago shakes himself out of his trance. He feels a pinprick on his shoulder and looks down at Dan, who is kicking him with tears in his eyes.

"You could've killed them! Jerk!" Dan kicks his partner again. The others were facing similar reprimands from their Human partners, by the looks of it.

"This…" Naga looked down at his hands, shaking with glee. "This is what I wanted. This was all I _ever_ wanted!"

Everyone's attention snaps back to the two siblings. They shift back into battle stances.

"And now you have it." Wavern says with crossed arms and an annoyed expression. "WITHOUT taking over Vestroia and the Human world. The only drawback is that you have to share it with me."

"Unimportant. It took me much too long to figure out how to control the Silent Orb on my own, anyways." Naga didn't seem to get the hint. "And now that we control both–"

"It's one Orb now. The Perfect Orb."

"–Cores. I mean, Core. Singular." Naga corrected, and turns around while looking over his healed body like a dog chasing its tail. "The Perfect Core, since it's going to become the center of a planet–"

"Naga, please!" Wavern grabs her brother's shoulders and spins him around to face her. "You've declared war on Earth! You've destroyed Vestroia and moved all the Bakugan to the Human world against our will and theirs! And that's not to mention the Bakugan that are still in the Doom Dimension and beyond! We need to fix this!"

"And we will." Naga says with a smile. Wavern is taken aback by how nonchalant Naga's demeanor is. "All we need to do is remake Vestroia with its new Perfect Core and pull the Bakugan from the dimensions where they don't belong back to their new planet!"

"Are...you.." Wavern stuttered, trying to piece Naga's plan together. "Are you suggesting we become the Core of Vestroia?"

"Yes, _exactly_ that! We are already connected to the Cores, and it takes at least two spirits to act as a bond in the Core itself. It only makes sense I be one of the two, since it would act as compensation for my actions. That way I don't have to owe anything to anyone."

Wavern was at a loss for words. She could see Naga wasn't kidding, then again he hardly ever was, but this turnabout was too much for Wavern to process after everything that had happened up until this point.

"Wavern?" The two siblings blinked and looked down. Joe was standing by Wavern's foot, looking pensive.

Wavern knelt and let Joe climb onto her hand.

"Are you going to leave?" Joe asks. His tone is soft, almost dream-like, and distracted.

Anybody else would have thought that Joe was halfway into his own head, but Wavern knew that voice as a sign of him trying to make himself enjoy the present moment as much as he could. Wavern was glad she had met and befriended Joe, even though their separation was going to hurt like a knife through the chest.

"Yes, Joe. Every minute we stay here, Vestroia disintegrates more and more. We have to return home."

"Ok," Joe responds, with a waver in his voice.

One of the adults suggests taking pictures, and it takes Wavern a second to remember what those are before she's going back to her ball form.

Everything becomes a blur of tears and goodbyes, with more pictures interspersed in between. She wishes fervently she could take with her pictures of everyone, but printing them would take time, time they don't have. (And even if they could, she would have no use for them as the Core of New Vestroia)

"We have to go," announces Naga from the rock a few ways over, where he had awkwardly watched everyone the whole time.

Wavern nods, and both of them call into the Orbs, hearing it them answer in unison. A portal bursts to life above them, and it's only a matter of asking the Orbs to gather all the Bakugan back into New Vestroia.

"Sentients! This is not a goodbye, but a farewell!" calls out Wavern as the portal closes. She does not know why she does so, but a voice whispers to wait and see.


	2. Begin Again

Walking with Runo in the park had become a usual thing. He really doesn't know how it happened. After the time he invited Runo to a movie (and after getting kicked out of the theater for arguing, but both of them promised to pretend it never happened), he just started hanging out with her more. It's pretty fun to argue with someone for the hell of it. Like right now.

"Man, Shun really isn't answering his phone! He needs to cut that out. Like, we get it dude, you're a ninja. You don't have to pull vanishing acts every other week!"

"You are annoying enough that disappearing for a week is a necessary thing!"

"HEY! I'm awesome to be around! Anyone would be grateful to be around me!"

"As if! I barely tolerate you, but then you have to go run your mouth and say something stupid! Wait no nevermind, everything you say is stupid!"

"It's not!"

"It is!"

"It's not"

"Is!"

"Not!"

Yeah. Shouting at each other's faces might not be the most grown-up thing to do, but hey it's fun! So who cares!

"Enough about that already!" Dan snaps. He then taps furiously at his phone and sends another phone call that does absolutely nothing. "He's still not answering!"

"Dan"

"What–"

"Didn't he say he was going to be busy with his grandfather's training this week?"

Well, now he feels dumb.

She crosses her arms and smirks "You forgot, didn't you."

"I– Uh– Argh!" ... And that's the very smart reply he comes up with. 'Good job', Dan tells himself, 'you proved her point, dumbass'. He gropes around blindly in his head for a different conversation topic and blurts out the first thing he finds.

"Why does he even do that training? Didn't he tell his grandfather he didn't want to be a ninja?"

"Well, yeah. But his grandpa said that even if he didn't want to do that, it was 'his duty as a descendant of the Kazami to learn the way of the ninja" or something. So instead he negotiated for free time so he could go out with us."

Dan doesn't respond, but he remembers the fun times and hangouts over the last few months. The sleepover at Julie's where they ended up getting lost in the canyon and needed Cato and Daisy to get them out. The weekend at Marucho's, where after getting so many complaints of getting lost in his house that Marucho decided to make a GPS app. (If anyone noticed that the voice of the app sounded remarkably like Preyas', nobody commented on it.). The day helping Alice and Doctor Michael pack everything so they could move to Wardington. (Michael wouldn't stop thanking Marucho for his generous job offer. It got old after a while).

He was pretty glad that Shun pulled his head out of his butt and joined them, even if he was just as cutting as ever.

"If you miss Shun that much you can just say so."

Dan shoves her, she shoves back and now they're stuck play-fighting like five-year olds on a sugar rush. Which is pretty normal. Just a day in the life, another common thing in his relationship with his... girlfriend.

The word still doesn't sit right in his mouth. Yeah, she's the girl he's closest to aside from his mother and yeah, he likes being with her, but he doesn't know what they are to each other. And he's pretty sure she doesn't know either.

Eh. It'll all work out in the end. Why worry about it when he can just shove a handful of dirt into her hair?

There's a second of calmness. A few specks of dirt fall to the floor. Runo turns to glare at him with a predatory glint in her eyes, baring her teeth. She picks up a branch laying innocently in the ground, points it at him as if it was a sword and shouts: "YOU ARE SO DEAD, KUSO!"

And almost like it was prophesied, thunder strikes the earth to their right. They're both knocked off their feet and blinded for a second. They get swallowed by a cloud of dirt, and Dan can feel his right hand burn after he scraped it on the brick path. His ears are ringing and refuse to stop making noise.

Runo curses to his left. And yep. Her right leg is scraped and bleeding a bit in a few places and it's definitely going to bruise later. She did insist on wearing a skirt to the park, though.

"You okay?" Dan asks, his own voice sounded muffled.

"No, you dingbat." Runo stood back up, knees still a bit wobbly. "What...WAS that?"

Dan turns toward the place where the sound came from and finds… a hole. A hole in the ground and a hole in the air, shining with criss-cross silvery patterns.

Not a hole, a portal.

"No way," says Runo, eyes wide, hand over her mouth.

"It's right there in front of you," says Dan, because he has aboslutely no brain-to-mouth filter and knows it.

"DANIEL!" she shrieks and moves to swipe at him. Dan narrowly escapes her swing and before things can get messier somebody else speaks.

"We don't have time for this!" shouts the familiar voice of Drago, the Dragonoid rolling to a stop a few centimeters before Dan's foot.

"Drago? Ohmigosh DRAGO!" Dan cries out and picks his old friend up, pressing him against his face. "I missed you so much!"

"And I missed you too, Dan," Drago replied, slightly squished. "Ow, let me go, we do not have _time_ for this!"

"I'm sorry, but our reunion will have to be celebrated later," he says, before lightly pushing so Dan can let him stand on his hand normally.

"What's the rush?" asks Dan, mostly joking.

"Remember that a great number of Bakugan had been ejected from Vestroia once the Cores broke down the barrier?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Not all Bakugan went to Earth. Many of them went to Vestal, a civilization more technologically advanced than yours.

When the Bakugan were called back to New Vestroia, the Vestals followed. We had finally gotten our home back, only to be treated like toys once again, this time in our own planet. I've come to ask for help. As much as I can get," pleads Drago solemnly, his head dipping down.

There's a beat of silence shared by both of them. That is very much not what Dan expected Drago to say. He'd thought the "saving the world" business was over after nearly three years passed and Wavern's words didn't seem to mean anything.

Even when Vestroia was being ripped apart, Drago had refused to look as if he was pleading for help, instead talking as if helping was a duty Dan had just because he was there. Just how bad are things for Drago to be doing that?

"Dan, call Shun. He's more likely to pick up for you than for me. I'll call Marucho, see if he can pick up the others. If he doesn't respond, call someone else and then try again." Runo fishes out her phone, expertly dialing the number from memory.

Dan follows to do the same, almost lets his phone fall and catches it at the last second.

"Don't laugh, Drago!" says Dan, pressing the speed-dial for Shun's number.

"I wasn't laughing," he responds, but he sounds like he's trying very hard not to bark out a laugh.

"This is Kazami Shun's phone. Record your message after the tone," comes from the speakers, and Dan can't help but respond.

"Shun you emo wannabe, answer your phone for once! Also don't use the Japanese way of saying your name, you sound like your grandfather!" he then hangs up angrily and searches for Julie's phone number.

Drago is laughing from Dan's shoulder, where he'd jumped to in the middle of the tirade.

"Shut it you– hey Julie!"

"Hey Dan! What's the occasion?"

"You need to come to the park near my house right now, there's a portal to New Vestroia open in it and I don't know how long it will last."

"Oh crap! What should I bring? Are we going to be gone for long? What should I wear? Wait, you're in Wardington, aren't you? How am I even going to get there from Australia!"

"Tell Julie that Marucho is going to pick her up in twenty," says Runo, already dialing for another number.

"You don't have to say anything Dan, I heard her just fine!" enthuses Julie. "I'll get packing right away!" She then hangs up the phone call.

"We may not have twenty minutes," warns Drago, watching the portal warily. Is it just Dan, or are the silvery patterns slightly out of sync? They've never used any unstable portals, since natural ones would disappear and the ones made by Michael's machine would shut down as a safety measure. Twenty minutes suddenly feels like too much and not enough.

"We'll just have to make do," responds Runo, aggressively tapping a finger on her phone. "Crap, Joe's not answering." She then turns towards Dan. She glares at him with the fury of a thousand suns.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GO CALL ALICE! DON'T YOU JUST STAND THERE LIKE AN IDIOT!"

"OK OK I'LL DO IT!" Dan shrieks, dialing Alice's number.

"Hello? Dan?" He's infinitely glad that she picks up so quickly.

"Alice, I need you to come to the park in front of my house. Right now. There's a portal open to New Vestroia and it made a hole in the ground."

"Oh dear. Where was your house again? I'm still too new to the neighbourhood to remember, I'm sorry."

"Just– ok. I know you have a learner's permit, so please get in the car and drive towards the Tower, then continue three street's forward, and two left."

"But my grandfather's busy–"

"Alice, the BAKUGAN ARE BEING ENSLAVED AGAIN. I THINK THAT ALLOWS YOU TO BREAK A FEW LAWS!"

"Right! Right, ok. See you then!" says Alice nervously. The jingle of keys rings through the line, before the call ends.

"Joe is definitely not picking up," announces Runo, just as a distant whirr begins to get louder and louder. Both kids look up as a huge shadow blots out the sun.

Marucho's plane thingie starts to land, blowing leaves and dirt everywhere. Seriously, he did not come to the park to eat dust. He also didn't come to save an alien race, but here he is. Mouth full of dirt, hair full of leaves and ears full of that stupid whirring noise.

Shun jumps off the rope he was hanging on, like the show-off he is, and walks towards the two of them.

"Dude! Where the heck have you been?" calls Dan. Shun ignores him and talks to Drago instead.

"How bad is it."

"Hydranoid and Preyas have been taken, along with every Bakugan in their hideouts. Gorem has gone into hiding, so has Skyress."

Shun doesn't respond, but he looks away, clenching his fists so hard his knuckles turn white.

"Dude, don't worry about it!" says Dan, taking the opportunity to sling an arm around Shun's shoulders.

"How can I not? The Bakugan–"

"I know! I know, but worrying about it won't change anything. We're already doing something, so chill."

Shun glares back at him, but he doesn't shrug off Dan's arm, so Dan counts it as a win.

"Hello boys~!" says Julie, running down the plane's ramp, tugging a protesting Marucho and three suitcases behind her. THREE.

"Did you bring your whole house with you?!" exaggerates Dan, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Oh, shush Danny-boy~"

The hum of an engine comes from the street, Alice parking hurriedly (but still somehow flawlessly) and running towards them.

"I'm here! I'm– I'm here. Oh wow, that's a really big hole," says Alice dazedly, still panting from her sprint.

"We cannot wait any longer," announces Drago. Dan finally notices how the portal started to shrink, sparks of different colors flying about and zig-zagging through the air in square-ish shapes. Like sparkler fireworks, or maybe glitches.

"Is it safe?" asks Alice worriedly.

"If we cross now, yes," answers Drago. "But I can't guarantee the same on the other side."

Dan nods and looks behind him at his five friends, and sees his own determination mirrored in them.

He faces the portal, and jumps in.


	3. In a few Paraxels

A sharp poke in the cheek woke Dan from a deep sleep.

"Knock it off, Runo," Dan grumbled, swatting the hand away. He was determined not to open his eyes and give his serial annoyer the satisfaction of making him budge an inch from his bed. The hand batting the air felt no other presence, so he let it fall back to the hard earth.

Wait, this isn't a bed.

Dan opened his eyes and sat up. He was in an empty, dusty plain where strange towers of rock shaped like mushrooms towered absolutely everywhere. From what he could see in the distance three suns of varying sizes beat down on the hard-baked earth. He was incredibly glad he passed out in the shade. He would be toast right about now if it wasn't for it.

A gust of wind blew dust into his eyes, so he grabbed his goggles from his head and pulled them onto his face. He breathed in and–

"Don't say my name."

Dan looked down at his jacket. He couldn't see Drago, but he could feel in his pocket that he was curled up, motionless. Just like when used to pretend he was nothing but a toy. Dan had enough sense to listen for once and bit down the questions that bubbled up. Like soda. Man, he was thirsty.

Wait, wasn't he being poked not long ago? He looked to his right, searching for the culprit.

The first thing he noticed was the motorcycle, propped on its kickstand about ten feet away. It looked like it was as long as he was tall, and the wheel's tires thicker in width than him as well. Yet, its design was curved and hourglass-like, giving it at least the illusion of sleekness.

"Hello," a muffled, unfamiliar voice said.

Dan finally noticed the person crouching just slightly behind him. They wore a motorcycle helmet that matched the motorcycle's paint job, although the white oil-stained jacket and brown jumpsuit clashed a bit with the gentle creme color of the bike and helmet.

"Hi…?" Dan looked around again, once. "How long have I been out?"

"Dunno. Thirty, maybe forty paraxels?" The motorcycle rider stood up and dusted off their pants. "I got here as soon as you popped up on the radar." They offered a hand to help Dan up.

"Para...xel…?" Dan accepted the offer and let himself be pulled to his feet. The blood rushed out of his head for a moment, and he nearly fell over again, waiting for the black static clouding his vision to clear.

"You should come with me," the motorcyclist continued, gesturing to their ride. "The Guard might be here any minute now."

"Guard?" Dan parroted. "Wait, go where?"

"To safety." The motorcyclist couldn't wait any longer, grabbing Dan by the arm and dragging him to the vehicle. They practically slung him over their shoulders as Dan's vision clouded with multicolored stars. He wasn't sure how they'd gotten him on the motorcycle so fast.

Now that he could hear the engine revving he decided that gripping however this was from behind so that he wouldn't fall off would be a pretty good idea right now.

The motorcycle picked up speed at an incredible pace. It was a really sweet ride, Dan thought to himself. They were gliding over the landscape, passing over the rocky terrain like it was nothing. The wind tousled his hair, but with his cheek pressed to the back of his apparent kidnapper's jacket he didn't feel the full force of it.

"My name's Mira Firman, by the way," the motorcyclist said. Finally! A name!

"Dan Kuso," Dan replied, watching the landscape of New Vestroia zip past. The wind was beginning to fully wake him up even better than coffee could. "Hey, when you said you picked me up on your radar–"

"You, and a few other people." Mira interrupted to finish his sentence. "I'll be making a few stops."

"Yeah, but, there were like, five other people besides me."

"So you came as a group," Mira mused, leaning the bike into a wide turn that made Dan grip a little tighter. "But you got separated. Why?"

"I dunno." Dan would have shrugged if his arms weren't so preoccupied with keeping him from being ripped off the bike by the wind and g-forces. "Maybe it was because there were so many of us, or maybe because of how long we waited for everyone to get together, or–"

A hostile ping came from what he assumed was the motorcycle's radar. He didn't know pings could sound hostile, but apparently they could.

Mira glanced backwards and Dan did the same, because what else could he do?

A flying ship that looked right out of a sci-fi flick was heading towards them. Fast.

"OH CRAP! Can't you go any faster!?"

"I'm already going at max speed, and it looks like the ship has already locked on to us! There's only one way we can shake it off now!"

She reached into a pocket in the collar of her jacket Dan hadn't noticed before.

"Flybeetle, aerial battle!" One of the Bakugan crawled to the top of the pocket and she clutched it in her hand. She looked back once more, seemingly to gauge the distance to their pursuers.

The ship was almost on top of them. Mira tensed, glancing in another direction before she grit her jaw.

"I need you to do me a favor!" she called out. She then lifted her other hand froM THE HANDLEBARS WHAT THE HECK IS SHE DOING.

She pushed a button on a strange-looking device, and a rectangle Dan recognized as a card holder popped up.

"I need you to take the Gate Card in the inside pocket of my jacket and put it in the Gauntlet."

Dan did what she said because he wasn't stupid.

"Wait, which side is up?!"

"It's a Gate Card, it doesn't have an up side! Have you never used a Gauntlet in your life?!"

"Hey!–"

"Field, open!" Mira called out, totally ignoring him. The card glowed orange with Subterra energy.

"We have a Ventus contender _,"_ A Bakugan warned her from the pocket of her jacket. "And we only have one flying Bakugan with us."

"Then we'll make her chance count." Mira tossed Flybeetle's ball into the air, letting the Bakugan be whipped away by the winds. "Bakugan, stand!"

An intense orange glow behind them signaled Flybeetle's arrival. The Bakugan hovered in midair, letting the ship slam into her so she could pin it with all six of her legs.

The ship was close enough that Dan could hear the sound of an alarm being activated. But as Flybeetle wrestled it, it fell behind them. Dan craned his neck to look back at it. He could still hear sounds of people shouting and things breaking. 'Take that!' he thought.

But in the chaos, he could see a little kid walking out onto the brig, holding a glowing green Gate Card.

A tiny green speck flew into Flybeetle's face, bouncing off her cheek. Dan wouldn't have thought much of it had it not knocked her out of the air.

"Wilda, I need eyes!" Mira shouted over the wind, and her partner Bakugan dutifully climbed onto her shoulder to survey the scene behind them.

"Ventus Atmos, no abilities yet s'far as I can see." Dan was grateful for the information, because that's a Bakugan he had never seen before.

"Lets not give them an opening. Dan, take the third card from my card pouch and put it in the Gauntlet!" Mira called out. This time the card holder popped out from the Gauntlet without her doing anything, which was good for Dan's peace of mind.

The Gauntlet closed as soon as he placed the card, and Dan could now appreciate just how cool that looked.

"Scarab Rammer!" shouted Mira, the card glowing bright green.

Flybeetle righted herself just in time. Her horn glowed with the ability's power, then tripled in width and length. She slashed blindly at Atmos, not caring what got caught in the crossfire of her attack.

"Rachis Shield." A bored, haughty voice called from the ship. Atmos flared her wings at the ability's mention, and took Scarab Rammer with her whole body.

The weight of Flybeetle's attack and Atmos's defense seemed to cancel each other out, just for a moment. But with one final heave Atmos deflected the attack, and the Subterra energy shattered like glass.

"Mira, Flybeetle could use some help–" said Dan.

"Ability activate," the green gremlin shouted. "Typhoon Chase!"

A strong tailwind picked up behind Atmos, and she used it to ram into Flybeetle's exoskeleton, right where she had crashed into the ship earlier. Her opponent vanished in a swirl of orange light.

Flybeetle's ballform darted back to her brawler, zipping through the air in orange zigzags and jumping back into Mira's collar pocket.

"I'm...sor...ry…" Flybeetle managed to say before she collapsed into a sphere.

"Atmos is above," Wilda (that was his name, right?) warned with a tinge of worry in his voice. "I think they're going to cut us off–"

The shock of Atmos hitting the ground knocked the motorcycle in the air. Mira had no time o do anything as they all plummeted to the ground.

The motorcycle, however, did. It kept its gyroscopic wheels facing squarely downward, taking the full force of the impact with multiple shock-absorbing safety measures. Both of its riders were startled, but they were pretty much ok.

"Stop her motor," their assailant spoke into a device on his wrist, and jumped down from Atmos' head.

Seeing him approach, Mira revved the motorcycle...to absolutely no effect. He wasn't bluffing. Crap.

"Alright," The Ventus brat said as he approached. "By the order of his majesty King Zenoheld, yadda yadda, you're under arrest for High Treason and Resisting Arrest, both of you idiots. Now come quietly so I don't have to miss lunch tasing you into submission."

"Stay on the bike, you'll be safer that way," Mira instructed, prying off Dan's arms and stepping off the motorcycle. "And give me the Gauntlet."

"Lync Volan," she called out to her pursuer, holding up her now Gauntlet-clad forearm. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Sheer dumb luck, honestly." Lync took a silvery baton off his belt, which extended and loudly sparked with electricity. "Come. Quietly. I'm not gonna say it again."

Mira grabbed another Bakugan from her collar and threw him to the ground. "Baliton, Stand!"

Lync heaved a disgusted sigh and snapped the baton closed. "Ability Activate, Talon Shredder."

Atmos's claws shone with Ventus energy, growing in length to become wickedly curved and sharp. She spread her wings, lifting herself up so she wouldn't trip over her own attack.

"Double Ability Activate!" Mira screams fearlessly, introducing both cards into the Gauntlet.

"Fuse Apollo Head and Clay Roller!"

Lync's eyes suddenly focused on his opponent.

The huge ankylosaurus-looking Bakugan bowed his head and hunched his shoulders so that the ability could take maximum effect. Some of his spikes opened up like flowers and shot out to grab onto Atmos, gripping onto her wings like so many curved claws.

Atmos used Talon Shredder to slice though some of the bindings, but it wasn't enough.

Baliton tucked in his head and his tail and curled into a ball, then began spinning like an out-of-control bowling ball, pulling Atmos under him and crushing her over and over.

Atmos finally dissolved into green light, and zigzagged back to Lync. He caught his frazzled Bakugan and tucked it back into his pocket, still staring intently at the two renegades he had been so dismissive of half a minute ago.

"...Where did a nobody like you," he said slowly, as he pushed Atmos into a holder on his belt and at the same time popped a new Bakugan out of it. "Get a Fusion Ability card?"

Mira threw her head back to laugh as she caught the victorious Balition. "Just like you said, Sky-Rat. Sheer dumb luck."

Lync actually looked angry now, not just annoyed, as he picked his next Bakugan. "Just keep talking like that, make me lose what little respect I had for you."

A flash of green light blinded everyone on the field. It didn't fully dissipate, a dim green beacon pulsed at the top of Freezer's glass domed head.

"Baliton's only weakness: tentacles."

"I don't have time for jokes, Wilda," Mira hissed through her teeth, taking an unconscious step backwards.

"Then throw me in. We need to finish this brawl quickly, right?"

Dan's focus shifts from the battle to the bike he's been trying to keep upright for the last few minutes. He still doesn't dare to grip the handlebars any tighter than gingerly, he'd rather not turn the thing on and watch their getaway vehicle speed away without them.

The ship starts to stagger back into the sky.

Mira glances back at Dan, and seems to make a decision.

"Really quick. Faster than you've ever brawled. Speedrun it! BAKUGAN, BRAWL!"

In an eruption of red and orange light, Wilda rises onto the field and grabs Freezer in one RV sized fist.

"Power Winder!" The ability card glowed from Mira's Gauntlet. Wilda glows orange and starts to squeeze Freezer tighter, the other Bakugan struggling in his grip.

For some reason, the Ventus dwarf looks smug. He loads another card into his Gauntlet, calling: "Ability Activate, Freeze Jail!"

The Freezer's head glow began shining even brighter, reflecting in Wilda's eyes. He made no movement as Freezer casually freed herself from his grip and wrapped her tentacles around his neck.

"You like that?" Lync taunted. "Freeze Jail stops a Baku–"

"Gate Card, open! Battle Quartet!" interrupts Mira as the field starts shimmering. Dan knows this one!

"Drago," Dan whispers. "You up for a battle?"

"If she's part of what I think she is, then this battle might just turn the tide of the invasion."

"Is that a yes?"

"Absolutely," calls Drago, and Dan can hear the grin in his voice. That's the one thing both of them have in common; their love for battle. Dan can feel electricity running through his veins, a wild smile stretching across his face.

"Mira!" Dan shouts, holding Drago up. "I'm joining the brawl!"

Mira opened her mouth to retort, just on the verge of throwing Baliton back in. But the moment she saw just which Bakugan Dan was holding, her mind changed in an instant.

"Then get over here already!"

"Bakugan, brawl!" he shouts, Drago jumping to his palm in one smooth motion, still flawless even after three years of separation. He throws the ball straight at the new Bakugan the annoying green kid threw, knocking it off-course.

The other Ventus Bakugan goes from ball form to their true form in a tumble, rolling across the field before stopping and righting itself, looking a bit worse for the wear.

"Verias, you suck!" Lync screamed at the dazed Bakugan.

"Bakugan, stand!" Drago rises in a storm of fire, letting loose a battle roar that shakes the field.

"Wait," remembers Dan. "I don't have any cards!"

The pink-haired kid stares at him. Mira stares at him. "Are you serious?"

"No, wait, I do have one!" Dan remembers. He had always kept one with him as a memento to his friend. He takes it out and breathes in deeply to call out the name of the attack.

"What are you doing?! You don't have a Gauntlet!" says Mira.

"I'll use yours then!"

"Wait, it doesn't work like that!"

"Too late!" Dan tugs her arm forward and places the card. She roughly frees her arm and tries to open the Gauntlet.

"Ability activate!" Dan calls out.

"Boosted Dragon!" Brawler and Bakugan speak as one. The fireball impacts Freezer, who's knocked into Verias. Both of them sprawl in the dirt.

Wilda takes advantage of the situation and stomps on both of them until they dissolve into green light and fall back at Lync's feet. It's over. The battle's won.

The ship takes that second to start barreling towards them.

"Oh no you don't," says Wilda, who flicks the ship away with one slap of his huge hand, just before returning back into his ball form. The ship spirals out of control and crash-lands in the dirt a good kilometer away.

Dan catches Drago and turns back to Mira, who's already running back to the motorcycle. This time it does turn on. Dan doesn't wait for her to call him and just jumps on the vehicle.

She does something with the handlebar and both of them zoom away from the ship and the kid throwing a tantrum.

"I'M ADDING DESTRUCTION OF GOVERNMENT PROPERTY AND ATTEMPTED MURDER TO YOUR CHARGES!" he screams after them like it's gonna make them come back. But it did make Mira flinch for some reason.

"He's probably joking about the murder thing," Dan reassured her.

Mira shook her head. "Being charged with anything at all…it's just..." she muttered, seemingly to herself. "Forget about that. How did you activate the Gauntlet?"

"I don't know, I just did what you did!"

"Gauntlets are supposed to activate for only one person! It doesn't make any sense! And where did you get the Pyrus Soldier?"

"I– what? I don't have Apollonir!"

"I'm not talking about the _Old_ Soldiers!"

"Would both of you stop arguing?" says Drago from Dan's shoulder. "We have to find the others!"

"Right, our other friends! Mira, you said we were going to go find them too, right?"

"...Does one of them have bright blue hair?"

Dan blinked. "Yeah?"

"And do the rest have white, black and auburn hair?"

"Yeah! You're missing one though. How did you know?"

"Because they're all right where we're headed."

Dan curiously looks over her shoulder to see a building hidden in-between rock outcrops. It gleams metal in the desert sun, with orange and blue accents. It's taller in the middle, almost as if that part of the construction served as a watchtower.

In front of it was a group of people, and Dan recognized most of them.

"Guuuys!" shouts Dan, waving one of his arms wildly, before hanging on for dear life. Mira braked, stopping the motorcycle and finally taking off her helmet. Dan takes off his goggles too.

Mira turns to look at him and both of them freeze.

"What's wrong with your eyes? What's wrong with your ears!?" they both said at the same time.

Dan doesn't understand what she's talking about. She's the one with the sideways pupils and elf ears!

"Mira!" calls a guy with greenish hair walking over to them and looking over the motorcycle. He has weird eyes and ears too!

He glares at Dan, but Dan doesn't seem to notice. Julie just called to him, and he really needed to see people who were familiar before this all got any crazier.

He goes in for a handshake with Shun, Julie interrupts with a hug, Runo yells at her, Alice hangs back and awkwardly waves. The Brawlers all settle into their comfortable chaos, excitedly swapping bits of stories of the crazy day they just had.

The kids are standing in two groups now. The Brawlers, and three strangers with weird eyes.

The Brawlers conversations cease when Mira loudly clears her throat. She's standing with a nervous but excited looking guy with muscles like a body-builder's dream goal, and the standoffish guy in purple gripping the handlebars of the motorcycle.

"Can somebody tell me what just happened?" asks Mira, hands on her hips.

Shun pushes his way forward to stand between the two groups and begins his story.


	4. Vent Your Troubles

Shun had been woken up by a pebble falling on his cheek.

He immediately snapped into a fighting stance, automatically taking in all angles of his surroundings to anticipate his grandfather's attack, only to almost pitch over. He cried out, clutching his head, trying to breathe the pain and vertigo away. He tried to distract himself by watching his surroundings.

All around him was a dense forest, covered in plants he didn't recognize. Strangely, some of them opened and closed their buds periodically, letting out puffs of smoke and steam. The plants filled the place with hisses and the smell reminded Shun of hot springs.

The pain had finally lessened enough to stand upright, and experimentally touch one of the plants. It was like placing a hand on a car's metal surface on a sunny day; hot enough to burn if you touched it long enough.

He figures out he'll be fine if he runs fast enough, and jumps onto the branch. It's not so different from jumping trees back on Earth, even if after a while his eyes start to sting and water.

Maybe that's why he doesn't see the metal flying machine until the last second.

He tries to stop, but the momentum he has is too great, so the only thing he manages is to switch directions with an extremely ungraceful flip that almost makes him run right into a rock wall.

He blinks for a second, realizing that his hair hadn't gotten in the way of the maneuver. Because he cut it. He shakes away the pang of guilt and melancholy to focus on the thing he almost crashed into.

It's a bright blue, metallic, with some blue accents and an insignia he doesn't recognize. It doesn't look big enough to hold a person bigger than a toddler. On its underside it has something that looks like a yellow spotlight, which is trained on the ground.

Shun supposes it could be a search ship, mapping out the terrain or something similar. Tough it doesn't make sense, since the sun overhead and the soft glow of the fire trees give more than enough light to–

He hears someone screaming. No, lots of voices screaming.

He squints at the beam. Bakugan are being pulled up from the ground in their ball forms, most of them crying out for help, not wanting to go.

It then dawns on Shun that machine is a Bakugan harvester.

He sees red.

Since the contraption is going in a straight line, it will eventually pass close to an outcropping, with a fire tree sprouting out very close to the edge. Shun doesn't stop to think and jumps as fast as he can, then scales the outcropping. He reaches the top and doesn't wait to breathe. He takes one of the longest branches from the tree and uses a nearby rock to break it off.

The explosion of steam almost takes Shun by surprise, but he jumps back at the last second. He knows steam burns are incredibly painful. He waits for the cloud to dissipate, checking how close the stupid chunk of metal is. A few meters, at most. He's running out of time.

He takes the branch and bites down a shout of pain. The branch hasn't had time to cool down at all, but Shun still grasps it and ignores the fact that he's going to get blisters all over his hands later.

He sticks the branch into the earth around the tree, which is a lot softer than Shun anticipated. He hammers the branch repeatedly, widening the already-existing cracks around the chunk of clay-like earth the tree's rooted in.

He mentally counts down, and then jumps onto the tree. With a crack, it starts to fall, hitting its target with a metallic clang. The machine lilts and sparks, spinning out of control to impact the copse of another nearby tree. It crashes, leaving deep gouges onto the earth and finally staying still.

A notice popped up on a wall-sized radar map screen littered with yellow dots that represented the Bakugan collectors flying over New Vestroia. The program automatically selected the red dot with a flashing error message and looked over the information.

"'Nother one went down," The head radar technician says in a bored voice. His subordinates are already looking into the issue while he idly crunches through an energy bar. "In around the same area 's the last few. Whoever's gonna go check it out should move quickly before all the harvested Bakugan escape."

One of those subordinate techs heard the door open. Thinking it was one of her colleagues, she turned around to ask for help with directing the still working collectors away from the area of the crashed vehicle. When she saw who it was, her request died on her tongue.

A wave of gasps and screams went up around the operations base. The head technician squinted in confusion at the ruckus below.

A heel clicked smartly behind him. He turned around in mild curiosity, then jumped out of his seat in shock to stand at attention.

The heeled figure was annoyed, but she still smirked at the quivering manager. "I was the one assigned to this backroads sector. So I guess that would be me."

Shun throws the branch towards the metal thing, jumping down after it, careful to not move his hands.

One of the metal plates has gone loose and Shun winces, since the best thing to open it would be using the branch, yet again.

"Hey! Hey you!" says somebody from a tiny hole in the metal plating. "Did you do this?"

"Yes, I did," responds Shun stalling for the moment he'd have to pick up the burning stick.

"Oh thank you! I really really _really_ don't want to go back," the voice answers. It's tone is upbeat and high-pitched.

"Go back where?" Shun asks. Right now he knows nothing of the place he's in. He'd rather gather as much information as he can before he does anything else.

"To the city, duh! Please help us! We don't have much time," a pair of tiny eyes peek from the hole, both of them yellow and luminous.

"See that metal pole over there?" continues the Bakugan and sticks one of its short arms out of the hole to point to Shun's right. And of course, there's a pole that looks like it was part of the machine's plumbing before it got twisted loose. It's, thankfully, cold and Shun kicks himself internally for not noticing it sooner.

It's only the work of a few seconds to pry the panel loose, and a geyser of Bakugan erupts from it. Hundreds and hundreds of Bakugan. All of them were stuck together in such a tiny place?

Shun's distracted from his rising anger by the voice that had called to him before saying: "Thank you so much! We owe you one!" Shun finally notices that the Bakugan has the Aquos attribute, and it's one Shun has never seen before.

"Don't worry about it," says Shun, curtly, and goes up to stand. That's thwarted by the horde of Bakugan jumping on him and thanking him all at the same time. He's has no idea what to do, so he just stays silent and hopes they'll stop talking on their own.

One of them tries to jump on to the palm of his hand, and Shun violently flinches away. The Bakugan leap back in a wave. They didn't run away, though, they were hiding behind each other to see if he was going to attack.

"Yo, what's wrong with your hand?" the chatty Bakugan asks, since they're one of the few that didn't jump away at his sudden movement.

"I burned it."

"Yeouch. You minlins got the short end of the stick with wounds, dont'cha?"

"Minlin?" echoes Shun, looking up from a careful inspection of his palms.

"Yeah! It's a very old Bakugan word for 'tiny smart person'! The new Pyrus Soldier found it in a really old text, and now we use it to call creatures like you Vestals that!"

"I'm not a Vestal, I'm a human. Do you know if there's water nearby?" states Shun, getting up to find something to treat his hands with.

"No way!" the Bakugan gasped.

"Look, I don't know why you don't want to tell me where the water is but–"

"I'm not talking about that you dingus! A human! Preyas was right, they do exist!"

Shun blinks. That brought up more questions than it answered. "You know Preyas?"

"I'm part of his hideout! Well, I was part of his hideout. He got captured, and I was his second-in-command so now I'm the head of our group. I'm Elfin, by the way! Now what'dya need water for?"

"I'm Shun, and I need to treat these burns quickly." he said and gestured to his hands.

"Ooooh, alrighty then! HEY AQUOS PEOPLE, WE NEED WATER!"

A throng of blue Bakugan approaches, all of them producing streams of water so weak they were only a few drops, which together made a shower that soaked Shun to the bone.

Shun spluttered and shook the excess water off. "What was that for?!" he yelled, swatting at the Bakugan with his fully healed hands.

Wait.

Shun looked at his hands. They looked like he'd never been burnt at all, even though the skin still tingled with phantom pain. In fact, even though he had been jumping through the trees for almost an hour, his muscles didn't feel nearly as sore as they usually would...

Whatever, he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Now, if only he knew where he was supposed to be going–

"You vandal!" screamed a voice to his right.

He turned to look, revealing that the source of the voice was a young woman, glowering fiercely at Shun. She stood on an outcropping of rock that was free of steam-vent trees, dressed like a cross between an empress, a warrior and a Drag Queen. She was also pointing at Shun with a glowing blue sword, sparking with energy.

"You're the brat who has been destroying all my collectors!"

"That was courtesy of the Aquos Soldier's Hideout, you ignorant harpy!" screams Elfin, jumping up and down Shun's shoulder.

The woman doesn't show any signs of hearing Elfin at all, squaring her shoulders and declaring: "In the name of the Royal Family, I, Mylene Farrow of the Vexos, charge you with Destruction of Government Property! Surrender or your sentence will be aggravated!"

Shun watches the Bakugan flee from the corner of his eye. Elfin keeps screaming insults that she doesn't hear, doing her best to capture Mylene's attention. She's giving the other Bakugan a chance to escape, Shun realizes.

"Well? Are you going to come quietly or not?"

Like hell he will.

Yet, he doesn't have any cards. And while Elfin looks like she'd accept to brawl with him, Mylene very obviously has multiple Bakugan and cards. A Bakugan battle is out of the question.

He suddenly remembers his grandfather's words: 'Remember Shun, the difference between a ninja and a samurai is this; a samurai follows a strict code of honor, and breaking it is worse than death. A ninja will do whatever it takes to get the job done and live to fight another day.'

Shun shifts his stance and whispers to Elfin: "I need you to trust me. Jump into my hand."

"I'm not going to battle with you, you little–" Shun guesses he was wrong about his earlier assumption. Good thing that wasn't his plan.

"No brawling. I just need to do something."

"Promise you won't make me fight?"

"I promise,"

She jumps onto his palm. He walks closer to Mylene, tossing Elfin up and down.

Mylene scoffs and gets ready to throw her Bakugan.

Shun beats her to the punch and throws Elfin straight up.

Mylene follows the speck of blue with her eyes, confusion written all over her face. Shun uses the momentary distraction to leap forward, rip the sword from Mylene's arm, and dart back into the canopy of flowers and steam.

Shun doesn't turn to watch her as she screams in indignation, instead running as fast as he can, dodging in between trees and tight spaces, trying to lose her trail as quickly as possible.

He can hear the whirr of something behind him, and it sounds exactly like the machine he'd destroyed before, just bigger. Now he knows how Mylene got there in the first place.

Shun takes an impulsive decision and leaps for a break in the rock, waiting half a minute

in the small cave and then running in the opposite direction.

He has to stop soon after doing that, too beaten by fatigue to do anything else. He doesn't hear the whirring anymore, so he supposes he's lost her trail. He decides to go back to where he'd left Elfin, mostly since nobody would expect him to do that.

When he goes back to the place, the machine itself is gone, but the destruction caused by its fall is still there.

He finds Elfin on a nearby rock. "That was awesome!"

Shun nods, and says: "I only need one more favor."

"Shoot!"

"There are five other humans with me, do you know where they could be?"

"Huh. I don't really know! But! There's a building in that direction where a few Vestals live. The Bakugan with them say that they're a group aiming to free us. Most of us don't want to go there because we don't want to take the risk, but I think you could go ask them!"

Shun moves to go, but she shouts: "Wait! Preyas left you a message!"

She jumps again towards his shoulders, and says in a much lower voice: "There are five main hideouts, each of them lead by one of the new Soldiers, unless they've been captured. Pyrus will always be where history is greatest, Ventus where wisdom is found, Subterra where the fort's wall is the thickest, Haos will go where the sun leads, and Aquos where the tide flows to. Darkus will be avenged, of that the five promise.

"He told me you guys would know how to solve Skyress' cryptic thingie, I forgot he word for it. Though I'll just give you the answer to the Aquos one: we will always follow bodies of water! I'm only telling you this so you can come visit, ok? And bring Marucho with you! I'd love to meet Preyas' minlin!"

"Sure. Goodbye," says Shun by way of greeting an leaves Elfin behind while mumbling the rhyme in time to his footsteps to make sure he doesn't forget a single word of it.

Slowly but surely, the forest thins out, the red-hot trees making way for fantastical rock formations and unveiling a second, and then third sun.

It takes Shun a few tries to go by the metal construction, half-hidden as it is by a surrounding outcropping, but he finds it. He spots both Julie and Runo in a very heated debate with two other guys, one of them looking like he swallowed a lemon, the other bouncing around in place like a little kid.

Shun spends a while watching them from a distance, eavesdropping on their conversation. He doesn't pick up any kind of threat from them, and only then does he drop in the conversation.

Of course, Runo shouts at him for having scared her and their new friends. Shun doesn't care.

It is a few minutes later that they all hear the sound of a motorcycle.


	5. Regret and Rejuvenation

Get a rock the size of a Bakugan ball, choose a target, pull hand back, flick wrist, check if it hit right, repeat. Baron had been doing that for hours, trying to better his aim to do that cool trick Ace did of knocking an opponent's Bakugan off course in midair. It'd be sooo awesome if he could pull it off!

Baron grinned and picked another rock, getting ready to throw it and–

"Hey Baron, isn't that a dead body floating over there?"

Baron flailed around, the rock slipping from his fingers and hitting his head instead. He let out a squeak of pain, before turning around to try and search for the body. Instead, he let out a huge sigh of relief.

"Nemus, you scared me!" Baron said as he used his Gauntlet to open a Gate Card, and tossed his partner to the ground so he could stand. "Get her out, quick!"

"Why did I scare you?" Nemus asked. He reached over and plucked the flailing and screaming girl from the water. "A dead body is what you call Vestals that are laying down and not moving, right?"

"She's moving a lot? And also, no, sometimes that's just a sleeping person. A corpse is what is left behind when someone dies."

"Ah, I see. The minlin's word for the Dust." Nemus mused, setting the girl down by Baron and returning to ballform.

"Hey, are you okay?" asked Baron gingerly. She coughed and sneezed.

"Y-y-yeah-h." Runo stuttered through chattering teeth. "Th-th-than-nk-ks. S-s-tupi-d ri-v-v-er."

Baron takes off his jacket, setting it on her shoulders, she nods gratefully and curls up in it. Her shaking slowly starts to slowly die down, but her bad mood isn't going away at all.

"Hey, there's a Pyrus patch nearby. If you wanted, you could go there to warm up!"

"What's,–" she sneezed twice in quick succession. "–whad's a Pyrus padtch," she says, her nose stuffy.

"You really don't know?"

She shakes her head and glares at him.

"Ok! Ok, I'll tell you. You know how Bakugan have Attributes? Well, New Vestroia also has Attributes! They're these huge moving zones that are basically made of one Attribute! See the suns over there?"

She stands up, twisting her hair to get rid of water from it. The clothes she's wearing are the wrong ones to get out in the wilderness, Baron learned that one the hard way when his favorite skirt got shredded the first day he was out in there. He'll tell her that once she's in a better mood!

She looks up, squinting at the three glowing balls of light. She nods and goes back to wringing out her hair.

"Those aren't actually suns! They're just three Haos patches. See how the one in the left is going down instead of across the sky? It's because it'll eventually hit the Subterra patch down there and fuse with it. Last time I went to a Subterra-Haos patch it created this beautiful crystal cave! I want to see what this one would create though. It's pretty cool right?"

"It is!" she says, her eyes sparkling with wonder. This would be a perfect time to tell her about the skirt thing!

"What is your name?" asks Nemus from Baron's shoulder.

"Runo," she responds. "Nice of you to finally ask for it."

"My name is Baron!" says Baron, introducing himself cheerfully. He then realizes something and turns to Nemus saying: "You're not supposed to show yourself to strangers unless it's for a battle, Nemus! Mira told us about this!"

"Yes, Baron. But this girl is not a stranger."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Her name and her eyes, Baron."

Baron really wishes Nemus would stop being cryptic from time to time, but he still does what he said because it's kind of true that the name's been bugging him. He notices the weird pupils right away, the ears he looks at them a bit later.

Weird eyes, weird ears, blue hair, feisty and loud (just like her in battle), named Runo.

"You're Runo!" Baron's ecstatic scream startled Runo into screeching an undignified scream of her own.

"Who else would I be?!" she says, the glare back on her face.

"I can't believe it, you're actually Runo! Of the Battle Brawlers! Tigrerra told me so much about you!"

Her expression changes in a second, looking hopeful and a bit suspicious. "Hoooowwww do you know Tigrerra?"

"I'm part of the Bakugan Resistance! We want to free the Bakugan, and Tigrerra found out about this. She wanted to see if we really wanted to help all of the Bakugan, so she left her hideout and came to us! We eventually convinced her we were the real deal, so she was leading us back to her hideout until–"

Guilt crawls it's way up Baron's throat, and he can't bear to look at Runo anymore.

Runo waved her hand in front of his face. "Until?... Hey, I'm talking to you!"

Baron feels tears start to drip from his face, his shoulders hunching up and shaking. Runo retracts, even more confused and now a bit worried.

Nemus jumps to his shoulder, and Baron half-hugs him in an attempt to feel better. He tries to get the words out anyways.

"I-I lost he-her. I le-t her b- be take-en by the Ve-xos. I-I'm sor-ry."

Runo stills, staring at him with those unnerving human eyes. There's silence for a second.

"Get up," she says, still staring at him.

"Wh...what?"

"GET UP. STAND STRAIGHT YOU IDIOT!"

Baron does what she's screaming, his sobs picking up again.

"Are you sorry she's gone?"

"Yes," says Baron miserably.

"Do you want to get her back?"

"Yes!"

"Good!"

This throws Baron off for a loop. He reaches and wipes his tears, sniffling loudly, looking at her face. There's fire in her eyes, Baron notices, but it's not from anger. It's pure determination.

"Because I know Tigrerra, and she wouldn't want to see you crying over her. She'd want to see you get stronger and fix your mistake yourself!"

Baron feels like a huge weight's been lifted from his shoulders. All this time he's been looking for forgiveness of his mistake, but right now, he knows he doesn't need forgiveness. He needs a chance to prove he can do it. And Runo's giving him one.

"Thank you," murmurs Nemus, because Baron is too busy crying again to thank her himself.

"Oh, come on you crybaby," she says teasingly.

"I'm not a crybaby!"

"Who's the one that was crying a minute ago?"

"A minute ago I was throwing rocks!"

She blinks. "Why would you do that?"

Baron excitedly explains the trick Ace can do, and lets his regret melt away in another story that he would have found fantastical just months ago.

"That's not how you do it!" She immediately says, like she invented the move (did she? That'd be so cool!). "You're treating your Bakugan like it can't do anything while they're in the air. To pull it off, you give your Bakugan the impulse, but it's the Bakugan that corrects their course midair to hit the other Bakugan!"

"I didn't know I could do that," says Nemus, sounding baffled.

"You can! I'll show you. Do you guys have a Gate Card?"

"Yeah!" says Baron, looking for the compartment in his Gauntlet. He excitedly gives it to her, and then he notices she doesn't have a Gauntlet of her own!

"Wait, you don't have–"

"Gate Card, open!" she says holding up the card in the air. For a second nothing happens. Then the card begins to glow yellow, signaling the start of a battle.

"So, you first need to know where–"

"HOW DID YOU DO THAT!"

"Do what?" she asks, confusion written all over her face.

"You didn't use a Gauntlet!?"

"A what?"

Baron showed her the Gauntlet strapped to his arm. Mira told him to always keep one handy in case of Vexos.

"Why would I need that chunk of metal to open a Gate Card?"

"Because it's impossible to do that!"

"Are you blind? I just did that!" she throws her hands up in the air, but then seems to reconsider something and says: "Gate Card, close!"

The card glows again and does as she told it to.

"Look, take one of your Gate Cards and hold it in your hand."

Baron does as he's told, still pretty deep in disbelief.

"Now open the Gate Card!"

"How?!"

"You just saw me do it!"

"Uh– ok. Um, Gate Card open!"

Nothing happens for a second. Then another and another. Runo opens her mouth to tell him to wait for it, when the card begins to glow yellow. Baron stares at the card in his hand like it holds the secrets of the universe and not the source of all of the confusion in his life.

"See, it's not that harrd!"

"I don't know about that, I feel kinda tired," says Baron, and it's true. He feels like when he sprints up the stairs in the trailer; definitely worn out, but like the exhaustion won't last long.

"Are you ok?" she asks and Baron nods, still reeling.

"But we won't be," Nemus pipes up. "if we stay here for too long."

Both of them turn towards the Bakugan.

"You just used two different Gate Cards close to each other. That would definitely register as a battle in a Vexos scanner,"

"Oh crap! We have to go!"

"Go where?!"

"The Resistance base! We can't stay here for too long, Mistress Runo!"

"Mistress– what,"

"Let's go!" he tugs at her arm, breaking into a sprint. Runo follows, but loudly protests the whole way.

They eventually get to the building without incident, but two people were already there first.

"Who's that sitting next to Ace?" Baron asked at the same moment Runo gasped "JULIE?!"

Julie and Ace were in fact sitting on the front steps of the base, dusted with dirt from what must have been a heated battle, yet amicably chatting about nothing in particular.

"Runo!" Julie says and jumps up, "You won't believe what just happened to me! So, I wake up and there's this–"

"Who are you?" the guy in purple asks, glaring at Runo suspiciously.

"Nuh uh, you first," says Runo crossing her arms. Only now is Baron realizing just how similar the two of them are, which is right now a really, really bad thing.

"Oh come on, don't be a grump Ace! Ace, this is Runo Misaki! Runo, this is Ace Grit! See? It wasn't that hard!"

"You're the brawler of the Haos Soldier?" says Ace. Baron knows that Ace's surprised tone can be very easily be mistaken as condescending.

Runo uncrosses her arms and goes to take a step forward and Baron knows that she absolutely would scream at Ace to his face, so he panics and blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind.

"Did you know she can open Gate Cards without a Gauntlet?"

Both of them stop to look at him.

"Baron, are you trying to prank me? That's impossible!"

"It isn't! I just did it a few minutes ago!" says Runo, angrily swatting a strand of her hair that got into her face.

"Wait, don't tell me _you_ pranked him. Baron, you need to be less trusting of people."

"Ace, relax! She's telling the truth. I can do that too!" says Julie, setting herself between those two.

"Are you kidding me?"

"I'M TELLING THE TRUTH, HELL, I'LL PROVE IT TO YOU!" screams Runo, from over Julies' shoulder.

"Absolutely not!"

"Why's that, huh? Scared you're wrong?"

"As if! No, we've already maxed out the radar camouflage. One more battle would lead the Vexos right to our doorstep!"

A green blur comes out of nowhere, jumping in suddenly. All four of them jump and scream in alarm.

"What are the Vexos?" asks a guy in green, calmly, unhurriedly looking at the four of them.

"Shun, you jerk!" says Runo. No way, this guys' the Ventus Soldier's brawler?! "You didn't have to scare us!"

Shun only shrugs and opens his mouth to ask his question again.

A motorcycle's roar never lets him finish it.


	6. Resist and Rescue

"I think that's everyone so far." Dan announces as Julie and Ace finish their side of the story.

"We're still missing four Soldiers and two minlin." Drago reminded him, deciding to roll off Dan's shoulder and use his arm as a slide to gain momentum and land on Julie's shoulder. He lightly bumps into Gorem, having miscalculated his speed just a little.

"Three of which were captured by the Vestals," Gorem added solemnly, helping Drago get comfortable.

"Don't even worry about it," Dan reassured them, waving his hand carelessly. "Now that the gang's back together finding them will be a breeze!"

Dan has always been a bit too optimistic, in Drago's opinion. This time Drago can't blame him though. He hasn't seen the extent of the Vestal's cruelty towards Bakugan yet, and not even humans would come out unscathed if they went against them.

"So, Ace, was it?" Shun asked the Vestal, still leaning on the motorcycle. "You mentioned something about a radar monitor that tracks 'pings'. Those 'pings' being us."

"Yeah, we were using it to track you guys down to begin with." Ace shrugged. "But we knew from the beginning we wouldn't get everyone. There's too many of you and too few of us."

"If I didn't know any better," Runo cut in testily. "I would think that you were giving up on our friends. Alice and Marucho are still out there, and we gotta track 'em down!"

"We don't have any time to waste, then!" Mira interrupted Ace's cynical rebuttal. "Well, not anymore time, anyway. The longer those two are out there the more danger they're in. We'll think about what to do with them later."

"To the monitor!" Baron pointed dramatically to the base's front entrance and ran inside, dragging Runo and Julie with him, despite their protests. Drago managed to jump back towards Dan at the last second, and Dan caught him instinctively, just like they had done a million times before.

Ace stood by the motorcycle, blinking in confusion and a bit of surprise at Mira's rashness. She, in turn, looks back at him and says: "Ace, if you're going to stay here, give the bike a check up. She took a pretty hard landing in a battle just now and I'm a little worried about her gyroscopes."

Ace seemed to gather himself and nodded.

Mira beamed and gestured for Dan and Shun to come in with her. She held the door open for them and kicked a small rock under to prop it open.

Drago looked curiously around the room as his eyes adjusted to the artificial lights. It looked similar in design and concept to the motorcycle, but Drago had never been very good with machines. The whole place gleamed silver, with rows of panels to his left, and what looked to be a living room on the right.

Mira had already walked to what looked to be a computer terminal, where the two human girls and Baron were already leaning over.

"So how does this thing even work?" Runo asked, using the back of Baron's chair as an armrest while he brought up the ping radar and unmuted it.

"Not sure, actually," Mira said with a shrug. "The wavelength we found you guys on is meant to track the energy signatures of Bakugan."

"Whaaat?" Dan tilted his head to the side, arms crossed. "The only bakugan we had with us was Drago. How does that make sense?"

"It could be a byproduct of the dimensional radiation that brought you all here in the first place," Baron suggested, not looking too sure of his theory himself. He frowned and leaned forward, squinting at a ping that the computer didn't seem to know where to place. "Hey Mira, I think the radar's bugging out."

Immediately, Mira crouched and slid out a panel on the computer's side. There was a maze of blinking lights and silvery metal circuit cases, but one of them had a USB port looking hole that Mira plugged her Gauntlet.

"So where are Alice and Marucho?" Julie asked impatiently, gripping the back of Baron's chair and shaking it, which prompted Runo to shoot her an annoyed look. Julie stuck out her tongue at her.

"Since the radar's on the fritz, we can't really be sure," begins Baron, tapping at a few buttons at Mira's request. "But the dot that isn't going crazy is moving way too fast and smoothly to be walking, so I'd guess they either found a flying Bakugan to carry them, or– Hey, the crazy dot is getting really close."

"KING'S BALLS, WHAT THE HELL!" comes from outside the door, followed by a crash and a string of cursing.

Baron just looks scandalized, and Mira slaps a hand to her forehead, looking very much mortified.

"Please, excuse his language," says Mira, turning to address the Brawlers, before whirling around to lean out the open door and shout. "ACE! We have guests! You can't just go around throwing insults like that when we– Who are you?"

"Are you– are you the Bakugan Resistance?" says a breathless, concerned voice from outside, and it doesn't take more than half a second to recognize who that is.

"ALICE!" chorus the humans without meaning to, and all stampede out the door, their Bakugans having to scramble to not get thrown off. Mira barely managed to jump out of the way.

Alice freezes for a second like a deer in the headlights, which gives everybody else a chance to bury her in hugs, and accidentally knock her to the ground, along with everyone else. Or just stand off to the side of the dogpile and bow a bit towards her, like Shun did.

"Oh my gosh, we were all so worried about you!" Julie had her arms around Alice's neck and wouldn't let go until Alice tapped for mercy.

"I was worried too!" Alice tried to hug everyone back all at once, accidentally poking Dan in the eye. "I-I thought I wouldn't make it to this building, to be honest…"

"Wait," suddenly says Runo, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at Alice "...Were you teleporting with the card again?"

"Yes, I did but–"

"YOU IDIOT! _You_ told me you needed coordinates to teleport safely! _You_ told me that without Bakugan the card takes too much energy to work for long! _You_ told me it only had the leftovers of Hydranoid's energy left for fuel!" Runo stands up and places her hands on her hips. "What happened if you teleported your leg into a wall, huh? It would break off, and what would happen if you didn't have any more energy left to teleport away, huh? That was really, really stu–"

"Runo, please." Alice was pale and shaking. "I had to do it! There was no other option!"

"What do you mean?" says Julie, giving Alice a hand so she can stand up too

"There was a lady with blue hair, wearing armor and a cape–"

"I saw that lady too!" Shun cut in, uncharacteristically angered. "Mylene Pharaoh, right? She was trying to kidnap a whole bunch of Bakugan!"

"She has Marucho!" Alice blurted out. "She and that Volt guy!"

"Oh, no! What do we do?!" says Baron, looking pleadingly at Mira, then back at Runo, then back at Mira, then–

"That's easy!" says Dan, with the exact grin he gets when he's going to do something incredibly reckless. "We fight back!"

Ace burst into laughter about two meters away, next to an open garage door attached to the base. It looked like he was going to do some of those repairs but he had come out just to laugh at Dan. "Oh! Oh that's rich. You. Fighting the Vexos."

"And saving Marucho." Dan added through gritted teeth.

Julie looked from Ace to Dan with a very tired expression. "They're exactly the same, aren't they." She muttered to Alice. All Alice could do was offer a strained smile and a placating nod.

"Hey Mira, I just thought of something." Wilda said suddenly from his minlin's collar pocket.

"Hm?" Mira looked down at him.

"If we could track Alice on our radar, don't you think the Vexos could track her too?"

Mira froze, eyes widening in panic.

"I thought the Vexos couldn't see the base without the cloak?" Nemus countered from Baron's shoulder.

"Well, they could see the ping up until then, couldn't they?" Wilda hopped onto Mira's shoulder. "I mean, come to think of it, They could probably track them from the very beginning, and by bringing them all to the base we were just kind of broadcasting our location-"

"EVERYONE!" Mira screamed, startling them all out of their wits. "IN THE TRAILER _**NOW!**_ "

"Uh, the Vexos could be here any minute!" Wilda explained. "We can't let them see you guys if you can't brawl!"

Julie, for one, didn't waste time standing around blinking. She grabbed Alice and Runo, one in each arm, and strode confidently into the base. Baron coaxed Dan into forgetting his argument with Ace and got him to follow suit while Ace quickly and manually closed the garage door.

Mira was the last. She turned just before closing the door behind her and Ace, at an approaching silhouette on the horizon.

Dan immediately went for a window, almost falling face-first into it as the trailer shook and then began moving, at first slowly, then little by little gaining speed until they left the Vexos in the dust.

Dan began to cheer, but Ace quickly interrupted him: "Save your breath. We can't outrun them for long if we want the trailer to stay in good condition."

"He's right," agreed Mira, walking towards the central console, and pulling up the image of an aircraft, following the trailer from a distance. "We bought ourselves some time to plan, that's all we did."

She turned and looked at everyone present.

"Any suggestions?"

Silence filled the room.

"We could brawl them." Dan piped up.

"We could." Ace agrees instantly.

"Both of you please." Mira sighs. "We can't solve every single problem with a brawl! Brawling is a very, very risky last resort that we can't afford to keep using."

"What if we went around a pyrus patch?" Baron suggested. "That almost worked that other time."

"They might be expecting it," Mira mused. "but I like the idea of using the terrain. Can you pull up a map...?"

Ace felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to glare at Dan, who only beckoned him to follow him into a hallway. Ace is about half a second from telling him to buzz off when he notices Percival sitting on his shoulder, beckoning the same way. Ace glanced over at the argument the more logic-oriented members of the team was having.

"We could use my card–"

"ALICE WE TALKED ABOUT THIS."

Ace followed Dan until they were a safe enough distance to not be heard.

"Percival showed me the back door to get out!" Dan whispered excitedly. Ace couldn't help but be reminded of a toddler whose older brother let them hang with the 'cool kids' for a day.

"You really thought I'd be on board with this?" Ace deadpanned.

"Well, I am!" Percival said, maybe just a bit passive-aggressively.

"Come ON dude!" Dan threw out his arms. "We need to get the Vexos off our tail, plus we need to save Marucho. This is the best way! We go in, beat them up, get Marucho, get out."


	7. Quartet Performance

"Oh, it'll be SIMPLE, Ace!" Ace sang in a mocking tone. Dan tried to shush him, worried that one of the prowling guards surrounding the Vexos' aircraft would decide to check the rock spire they were hiding behind and see them. "We'll just rush in and rush out, it'll be a piece of CAKE!"

"Don't worry, Dan," Percival said as he reassured the panicking Vestal. "My cloaking makes us completely invisible to Vestal scanners, and eyes. I only took it down earlier because we wanted them to track us instead of the trailer base."

"What we really should be worrying about is how to pull this off," Drago sighed. "Any way you look at it we're outnumbered."

"We should probably just rush in," Dan whispered.

"What!"

"No!"

"Do NOT."

"Whaaaat? If Drago and Percival get out and start stomping around, all the guards would scatter and the Vexos would come out and brawl us!"

"We would squish about 20 of them in the process! We are not killing anybody!"

"Dan I assure you that would NOT BE WISE."

"Well, we don't have to stomp around, maybe just some lasers–"

"AHem."

The argument stops abruptly. All eyes snap to a fifth member of the conversation, who by all accounts should not be here.

"Mi– Mira!" Ace stuttered. Normally he'd be relieved to see his team leader, but normally she wasn't glaring daggers at him.

"I cannot turn my back on you two for ONE blink–" Mira fumes, crossing her arms "–without you running off, chasing your next adrenaline high! What were you two _thinking_!?"

"How'd you even get here?" Dan's confusion won out over sheepishness.

"Uh," Baron waved from behind Mira's back. He and Julie were a little ways behind her, looking a bit annoyed as well, but not nearly as ticked off about it.

"Nemus can use a cloaking ability as well, but it needs a card to be activated." Percival explained. "I can just use my Cloak whenever I want."

"You guys parked the trailer, right?" Ace mentioned, desperately trying to change the topic.

"No, we just left it out in the open OF COURSE WE PARKED THE TRAILER! Right after Shun kindly informed us that you two had run off in the middle of an important team discussion on a suicide mission!"

"Yeah," Julie mused. "He's been, weirdly quiet lately, even for him."

"Daniel," Drago said suddenly, floating in the air by the edge of the spire where he could be seen. "The guards all went back into the ship."

The minlin's arguments came to a stuttering halt. Ace was the first to crane his neck to peer around at what Drago was seeing, followed by all of the rest of them in an awkward pile as they pushed each other to get a better view.

The guards were filing back into the ship in disorderly rows. They were a lot less than they had seemed when they were all spread out, and they were all inside in the next moment.

The door closed with a hydraulic hiss, and an eerie silence settled over everything.

It was abruptly interrupted by an ear-splitting feedback screech.

" **We have a hostage,"** came from the speakers of the still grounded aircraft. The voice sounded male, scratchy, and a second away from bursting into mad cackles. **"Surrender now or else he's getting electrocuted."**

Dan took one last look at the terrain. The valley where they had lured the Vexos to bare and big enough for a good battle, and Dan intended to use that to his advantage.

"Are you ready?" Drago asked from his shoulder. Dan nodded, and Drago jumped into Dan's palm. He stepped out from behind the rock, and walked up towards the machine, feeling very conscious of the weight of the pilfered Gauntlet on his arm.

" **There you are! Are you surrendering?"** taunted the voice.

"NO!" Dan yelled. "I'M CHALLENGING YOU TO A BAKUGAN BATTLE! IF I WIN, MARUCHO GOES FREE, AND IF I LOSE I TURN MYSELF IN. DEAL?!"

A beat of silence followed Dan's challenge as the Vexos had a brief yet heated argument, the microphone turning midway through it. Dan looked back at the Resistance and the Brawlers, all of them hiding nearby. The microphone turned back on again with another feedback screech.

" **No. Just surrender. No battle."**

"WHAT'S THE MATTER, HUH? SCARED YOU'LL LOSE?!"

" **...Yes."**

A loud whacking noise followed this, and the line cut out. Half a minute later, the mic turned back on and a new voice spoke.

" **We are not afraid to lose, WE ARE THE VEXOS AND WE DO NOT LOSE,** **SHADOW** **. We simply tire of fighting pointless battles that get in the way of our job. Now, I'm going to count to three, and if you don't surrender right now your little friend is getting electrocuted three times for every second I waste counting, and then stabbed when I reach zero."**

Mira walked out onto the field next to Dan with a megaphone and turned it on. It let out a noise like nails on a chalkboard that didn't go away until Mira was halfway done with the thing she was saying.

" **Cruel and Unusual punishment of any sapient being is punishable by a 75% income fine and ten nectals in prison. And if the crime is performed by, because of or within the knowledge of a registered public servant who made no attempt to stop the crime, the public servant is subject to punishments of the same severity or higher, depending on the court's ruling."**

Mira shut off the megaphone, looking smugly up at the ship.

The line cut out once more. The Vexos needed nearly five minutes of time to discuss before the speakers turned on again, and a third voice spoke.

" **We accept the terms of the brawl that your brown-haired friend suggested. The four of us will battle you in a Battle Royale brawl."**

" **The Bakugan Battle Brawlers Resistance thanks you for your cooperation."** Mira deadpanned into the megaphone and turned it off just as it began to screech with feedback again. She grinned at Dan and he held out a hand for a high-five. She looked uncomprehendingly at it.

"Just hit it," said Dan, waving his hand a bit so she wouldn't leave him hanging.

He didn't expect Mira to punch it.

"GAAAAUGH Not that hard, dude!" said Dan, shaking his hand from the pain. "When this is over, I'm teaching you to high-five."

A light and a scraping sound broke out from under the aircraft, and four figures suddenly materialized out from it. They looked like they had stepped out of a carnival a second ago.

"Hey guys! Who's going to brawl too?" said Dan into his Gauntlet, the first of the very few things Ace had taught them how to do during the ride there.

"Me!" "Of course I'm going to brawl," "Oh, oh, I wanna brawl! Can I?" said Julie, Ace and Baron at the same time, and Mira, at hearing this, simply sighed.

"Very well then, it seems I'm missing this battle," she said, and stepped aside to make room for the other three. Wilda doesn't leave her shoulder, and she still leaves her Gauntlet in "stand-by for battle" mode, so Dan bets that if things don't turn out like they hope, she won't just accept defeat that easily. But she does open a video streaming app to let the brawlers in the trailer watch what's happening.

The other three arrive after a short sprint with excited smiles, and all of them switch their Gauntlets to battle mode smoothly. Dan hurries to imitate them and he's pretty sure he doesn't look as cool since Julie is a pretty good actress and Baron and Ace have done that a lot. Great, he's going to get pegged as the rookie of the group.

"Are you done being immature?" drawled Mylene, and without waiting for anyone's cue, she raised her Gauntlet and said "Gate Card, open!"

Everyone else scrambled to follow, even the people from her own team, beginning the battle with shouts of "Gate Card, open!"

The guy who looked like a not-bald Santana was the first one to make a move, throwing a Gate Card to the ground and watching it expand.

Dan didn't like how Gate Cards worked here. The card could have been a Mind Ghost for all he knew and since it was all over the floor the only way to escape it would be to negate it. That was just a huge hassle.

He didn't have time to complain about it though!

"Bakugan Brawl, Bakugan Stand!"

–––––––––––––

Percival let energy flow through him as he burst into his true form, landing firmly on the dusty earth. Beside him, his fellow warriors did the same, except the Dragonoid, who took to the skies as soon he was able.

It was a sensible choice, mused Percival as he surveyed his opponents, two of which are able to fly. It would certainly be a hassle to fight Darkus Sylfee and Ventus Atmos while earth-bound, but in the air it was a different matter altogether.

"It would be an honor to fight beside all of you," says Nemus, shifting himself into a fighting stance.

Percival takes the polite offer of alliance and the acknowledgment of their skills with grace, adopting a fighting stance of his own.

Dragonoid roars agreement from the sky, and Gorem stomps once, shaking the field with his might.

The Bakugans fighting for the Vexos look even more on-edge and tense than they had before, but they nevertheless accept the challenge politely by readying themselves for combat.

Good. If they had adopted half-assed stances, or even worse, no stance at all, Percival would have had no mercy on them. But respect begets respect, so he will fight with honor and take a clean victory.

The first ability is called out, and Percival dodges as Atmos glows with green energy and starts zooming towards Percival.

Percival has just enough time to see Dragonoid begin attacking Aquos Abis Omega, taking advantage of it's serpentine body not being entirely meant to move outside of water.

Just as Atmos is about to impact, he feels the familiar rush of Darkus Thunder run through him, so he lets himself be struck, only for Atmos to cry out in pain at the black voltage.

Percival goes flying and controls his trajectory in order to land on his feet, scratching gouges into the earth but remaining absolutely unharmed. He then has to leap out of the way of a falling Haos Dynamo, struck down by Gorem's hammer, who returns to ball form.

Mira claps and cheers at the win, and Gorem nods solemnly before returning to ball form for the next assault. Julie squeals loudly and blows a kiss to Mira, who laughs and gestures for Julie to continue the battle.

"C'mon Percival, I have a plan!" shouts Ace, and Percival nods, jumping back into the fray by punching Sylfee out of the sky.

Still, Ace gestures to towards Abis Omega and then does a drill motion with his finger, which is all Percival needs to know.

Nemus unleashes a discharge from his staff, paralyzing Abis Omega, and Percival takes the boost of energy the Ability Card gives him to make himself into a drill using his cape, and bore one final hit into Abis Omega.

Percival returns to normal, letting his cape flare out behind him for a bit of dramatism, and crosses his arms in proud victory.

He returns in a flash of purple light into Ace's hands, the feeling of his whole body compressing still unnerving him, despite all the times he's done so before.

The minlin engage in customary taunts, and Percival uses the time to check the life meters.

At least half is left for Volt, a bit more than a third for Mylene, three quarters for Shadow and a fourth for Lync.

Percival discreetly jumps to Dan's shoulder, and asks Dragonoid: "Why is Lync's meter so low?"

"He decided to throw two Bakugan on the field, and Nemus managed to push one of them behind the other, just as I was letting loose a Boosted Dragon," he explained in a hushed tone, looking to see if their minlin were finished with their business.

"Thank you, Dragonoid," says Percival, dipping his head slightly in politeness.

"Please, call me Drago."

Percival nods and jumps back to Ace's shoulder, pondering the strange change of name. There was no other Pyrus Dragonoid with their group, so why would he change his name in such a way?

Still, the battle seems to be commencing once again, and Percival jumps to Ace's outstretched palm.

This time, it's Baron who throws the Gate Card down, and soon enough Percival's flying through the air.

He angles himself just so that he knocks into Darkus Hammersaur, knocking it completely off-course. His adversary at the moment grows into his true form in the wrong angle, and falls to the ground. Ace obviously thought of the same thing as Percival, so he gets a boost of power and unleashes Tri-gunner before Hammersaur can stand back up again, and just like that Hammersaur is defeated.

"Where was the challenge?" Percival laughs triumphantly at Shadow, who very predictably begins throwing a tantrum.

"Shut your mouth! You stupid rebel, I'll get you back for teaching your Bakugan to say that!" shrieks Shadow from the other side of the field.

Percival ends up reverting into ball form with a frown on his face and the urge to take Shadow into his fist and shake him around a few times to finally make him understand that he is _sentient_ and Ace was not his _damn puppeteer._

"Don't worry, Percival. We'll make all of them understand," assures Ace, placing Percival on his shoulders so he can watch the rest of the battle.

Apparently, Ventus Verias and Dragonoi– Drago managed to knock each other out at the last moment, thus emptying Lync's life meter.

Haos Hexstar gets a lucky hit to Gorem's back and he goes down, halving Julie's life meter.

And suddenly, it's just Nemus against Aquos Abis Omega, Darkus Anchorsaur and Haos Hexstar.

Not good.

Ace holds out his palm, and Percival jumps into it to go to Nemus' aid.

"Wait!" calls Mira.

"What are you doing, Mira!" immediately retorts Ace. "That's three versus one, and if you haven't noticed, all of of them have different brawlers! There's no way Baron can make a win out of that on his own!"

Dan seems to share the same opinion, and Julie keeps glancing from Mira to Baron with a frown.

Mira doesn't answer, and instead looks back at the fight.

The three Bakugan rush Nemus, all of them with abilities active. It looks like the battle is lost, until Baron shouts: "Ability Activate, Fuse Shade Cocoon and Flow Skylight!"

Percival watches with an open mouth as their G's are exchanged, and Nemus ends up with a whopping 1750 G. Nemus doesn't wait, and in a single strike, empties the life meters of the three of them, and the Bakugan fly from the Vexos to the Resistance.

There's a moment of silence as the Vexos realize they have lost.

"WHOOOOOOH! GO BARON!" Dan grabs the flustered Vestal in a noogie.

Baron's Gauntlet beeps and he automatically looks to see what it is.

Percival's curiosity gets the better of him, and he jumps to his shoulder to catch a peek.

It turns out to be a photo of a grinning Runo, with her hand in a fist, with only a thumb sticking out, for some reason. Alice is doing the same in the background, smiling softly. It's slightly blurry and off-center, but pretty good for someone's first time taking a picture with a Gauntlet.

"That was quite a performance, Nemus." Drago said, hopping onto Baron's shoulder and giving Nemus a friendly shoulder-bump.

"Very impressive indeed," Gorem said from Julie's palm. "I am always surprised and amazed by the clever ways you Haos bakugan win your battles, and you are certainly no exception."

Nemus and Baron both looked a little faint.

"Well?" says Mira, walking to the front of the group, looking defiantly at the four Vexos, one touch away from summoning Wilda into the battle. "We won. Are you going to uphold your part of the bargain?"


	8. Honor before Duty

Marucho was huddled in the corner of his cell, behind the bench-like platform that was the only furniture-like thing in the room. Physical combat (or physical anything for that matter) wasn't his strong suit, but he could still try to catch his captors off-guard and make a run for it.

Unfortunately, he ended up sitting in place so long that when the cell doors opened his legs were cramped in a bad position and he ended up stumbling right into Volt's shin.

Volt picks Marucho up by the collar of his vest and carries him under his arm like a clasp purse. Marucho tries flailing and screaming, but that puts uncomfortable pressure on his ribs so he stops rather quickly.

"Hey, the little twerp dropped these!" Said a short, pink-haired guy, coming up to match Volt's pace, dangling Marucho's glasses between his fingers with a mischievous smile on his face. "I wonder what he would do if I broke them!"

"No! Give them back, I need them!" said Marucho and tried to catch them, but all pink-hair guy did was start to play keep-away with him. Tears of frustration started to build in Marucho's eyes, and he stopped swiping at his glasses to scrub his cheeks with both arms. He hated that he always ended up crying when he was angry.

"Knock it off Lync," grumbled Volt. He easily plucked the glasses out of Lync's fingers and gave them back to Marucho, who gingerly put them back on his face. "Being cruel to prisoners is dishonorable."

"Duh, that's the point! I'm having my fun now, because after we go to report to the Crown, we won't get to have fun for a long while," pouted Lync, stuffing his hands in his pockets and kicking the ground dejectedly. Then he whirled around with a frown on his face. "Why do we have to give the twerp back! If it wasn't for your _stupid_ sense of honor we could have–"

"Made the Resistance surrender?" snapped a feminine voice from behind them. Marucho flinched at it, instinctively flattening himself against Volt to look smaller. "That was the original plan, when the Resistance was just a group of misguided children running around with imbecilic ideals," she said, striding forward resolutely towards the group. Her slitted, unnerving eyes cut straight at Marucho's own. "But now… they've proven they're strong enough to be a thorn in the Crown's side," she smirks with satisfaction at Marucho's wide-eyed surprise.

Volt subtly checks around the room nervously, but doesn't contradict her. Lync starts inspecting the walls carefully.

"Now, if you would make yourself useful." Mylene said sharply. She yanks Marucho out of Volt's arms and opens the aircraft's door, "Tell the rest of your group that if they go against the Vexos, we'll crush them with no mercy.

"But, if they wish to go against the crown, they are welcome to do so."

Just as Volt is about to ask her to be careful, Mylene flings Marucho out as if he were a sack of potatoes.

Marucho hits the ground and rolls a few times before stopping, his entire body blazing with pain. Then he gets blasted in the face by dust, coming from the aircraft's lift-off which makes him shake with coughs.

He's still coughing when gets crushed by Julie's hug, who's talking so fast Marucho can't understand a thing. Dan then joins in with a really loud shout of "group hug!" and it all devolves into a pile of relieved Brawlers, finally reunited.

Steps ring through the empty corridor, the sharp, intricate designs carved into the metal walls glinting unforgivingly.

Gus walks towards the Vexos' meeting room, his coat flaring out behind him as he traces the route he's taken over and over again. This time, however, with anger in his face,

The corridor finally ends, opening out into a circular room, with six smaller circles on the floor, each of them colored like an Attribute. Mylene and Volt are already in their spots, the former looking far too calm for the situation, the latter watching with a stony expression on his face.

Gus finds his own place and resolves to hide his anger behind a self-satisfied smirk. It's only fair that if his fellow members want to mask their own emotions, he should do so as well.

Mylene simply huffs at him and looks away.

Steps start to come from the other two corridors, first softly and slow, then thunderingly as the architecture of the corridors does its work, announcing the presence of whoever wishes to enter the meeting room.

Lync is the first one to enter, greeting everyone already present with a snicker and jumping into his place almost childishly.

"What's up, idiots?" Shadow says, entering the room and seating himself on the floor of his spot, completely breaching protocol and decorum.

"Stand up Shadow!" barks out Mylene, and Shadow simply lets his tongue hang loose out if his mouth.

Gus rolls his eyes at their stupidity, and begins watching Spectra's corridor.

"Oh, hey lapdog!" calls Lync, already laughing at his own joke. "Where's your master?"

Gus ignores him as best he can, refusing to answer the moronic question or perpetuate the use of that nickname.

"Yeah, where is Spectra?" says Shadow from where he has decided to lie on the floor.

"Why would it matter to you," snaps back Gus, not liking the accusatory tone Shadow is using.

"If he got his ass in here, we could get this meeting started, but nooooo he has to make all of us wait for him like the pompous diva he is," says Shadow theatrically, waving around a hand as if he was reciting poetry.

Gus tightens his knuckles as the idiot begins to cackle at his own joke. He will not tolerate such disrespect towards his master.

"Calm, Gus," says a voice from beside Gus, and he starts, turning around to look at Spectra as he emerges from his corridor. "Infighting is a pain to deal with, after all," he says smoothly, steps completely silent as he walks towards his place.

"Finally!" exclaims Mylene and crosses her arms. "You were pushing it this time, Spectra. A few seconds more and we'd have made the Prince wait!"

As if on cue, the center of the room begins to shine with the Royal Insignia, a soft beam of light arising from it. The light creates the figure of the Prince, looking almost as if his royal highness himself was sitting in the center of the room. From all sides it looks as if the Prince was facing the watcher from his throne, watching them languidly as he twirled a lock of his hair in between his fingers.

The Vexos kneel down obediently, looking at the ground in submission to the Prince's authority.

"Rise," declares the Prince in a tone that most likely attempts to be smooth, but ends up coming across as haughty. "Report."

"Sire, we have gathered a few very… interesting facts during our patrols," begins Mylene, and exhibits her mastery in the skill of subtly smoothing out her clothes after bowing. " The most likely culprits for the destruction of the Bakugan collectors seem to be members of the Bakugan Resistance."

"That is rather obvious," says the Prince sharply. "If all of you wasted my time to tell me something so inconsequential, I'll have you whipped."

Gus has to stop himself from rolling his eyes at the Prince's threat. As a royal, he had the right to enact such punishments, and his highness enjoyed waving that threat around, yet he never went through with it. Pathetic, really.

"No, sire. What we found out is that the Resistance has new members," she interjects, and conjures four different pictures from her Gauntlet. "As you can see, these first two have both managed to acquire two "New Legendary Soldiers."

She then waves her hand, pulling up another photograph. "The black-haired one here took down a Bakugan collector in sector D-233-epsilon. His Bakugan was never photographed, and it is assumed to have an innate ability to teleport, since the scanner detected an energy source moving erratically from place to place."

"And the last one?" asks Hydron, finally sitting upright in his throne.

"The last one was a scared kid, hardly worth noting," Mylene finished, letting the the images fall away. "As such, the eight irregularities detected this morning are present and accounted for, though none of the technicians have been able to identify why the Vestal irregularities registered as Bakugan."

Gus immediately zeroed on the one omission the four Vexos were hiding. They had made no mention of the wager they had made and lost that morning, and Gus needed to rectify that.

"I may have something that will be useful for solving that interrogant," said Spectra before Gus could even open his mouth. "The photographs if you please, Mylene?"

She frowned at him, but complied, pulling up the pictures again. Spectra pulled copies from her Gauntlet to his, and zoomed in on the new members. "Isn't there something _strange_ about them?"

"What, you mean the hair?" said Lync, squinting at the pictures. "Wow, look at how _smooth_ that is," he said in a mocking tone.

Gus had to physically stop himself from reaching up to his own hair by clasping his hands together in front of his belt. The topic of it was a thorny one. It wasn't his fault he was born with a genetic anomaly for hair, why couldn't people just stop commenting on it?

"What are the odds of _five_ people in New Vestroia having the smooth-hair condition?" spoke Spectra into his Gauntlet, which then spit out a result.

Shadow whistled. "Less than 0.001%? Damn, just look at the kind of luck those bozos have!"

"Or do they? Keep looking," Spectra ordered.

Gasps started breaking out around the room as the irregularities are noticed; the shiny eyes, the rounded ears, the blunter teeth, the weirdly opaque skin… It suddenly seems ridiculous to everybody in the room that they had thought they were Vestals.

"The first other sentient species, aside from Vestals! I cannot believe that far-fetched myth is true!" says Mylene with wide eyes, surely scanning each difference carefully and cataloguing them. Probably for not making that same mistake twice.

"How did we not notice it before, Spectra?" asks Prince Hydron, leaning forward in his throne, his finger curling spasmodically around his hair.

"You underestimate the power of your mind, your Highness. You were not expecting to see humans, so your brain made it so. It always takes a while until minds adjust to new knowledge," explains Spectra, voice carefully neutral of the mockery that must be there.

Gus struggles to not let that same mockery show. How arrogant of them to ignore Profesor Clay's words about Bakugan, and brand humans the "first other sentient species aside from Vestals", as if they didn't use the species deserving that title as gladiators every single day!

"Those first reports make a lot sense now," says Lync, pulling up the first few entries on New Vestroia and highlighting parts that could be explained by Bakugan having contact with another sapient species.

"What are your orders, your Highness?" says Shadow in perfect accordance with protocol. Gus has stopped trying to predict when Shadow is going to behave like the noble he was born as, or the ruffian he grew up to be.

The Prince is silent for a few seconds, before seemingly nodding to himself and declaring: "The Resistance has become too large to be branded such a low-importance threat. Hunt them. I want them gone.

"And for the humans, capture them and bring them in for further study. Their Bakugans must be confiscated and brought to me, understood?"

"Yes, your Highness," chorus the Vexos, as Hydron nods, satisfied, and the feed cuts out.

Gus and Spectra immediately turn and begin leaving the room.

"Uh, where are you two going?" asks Lync, looking suspiciously at them.

"Didn't you hear what the Prince said? We have work to do. Fixing all of your mistakes is an around-the-clock job, after all," says Gus, crossing his arms over his chest.

"That's enough, Gus," orders Spectra, so Gus turns around and obediently follows his Master out of the room, completely ignoring every insult thrown his way from the unworthy Vexos.

The Vespalace is always crowded with throngs of people, and today was no exception. Teams of cleaning staff, batteries of palace guards and individual hand servants bustled about to do their jobs. Yet, all parted as Spectra passed by.

"If I may speak, Master." says Gus as the crowds thin out and they finally start to reach their quarters.

"Go ahead." Spectra opened the doors by making eye contact with the sensor at the center of the doorframe

Gus waited until the doors automatically slid shut behind them and the fluorescent lights flickered on overhead. "You seemed very interested in those humans. Yet, we didn't participate in any of the efforts to bring them in?"

"Jumping headfirst into battle without first knowing your enemy is a sure way to find defeat, Gus. A lesson that our...colleagues have not quite seemed to grasp yet."

"If they ever do."

"Now, Gus." Spectra didn't bother to hide his chuckle. And, since the door was closed, he didn't need to hide his face, either.

"Just think, Gus, of the secrets the humans hold!" exclaims Spectra, turning around in a flourish, starting up the computers with practiced motions. "Of the things we ignore, that they take for truth!"

"Hydron _would_ like to get his hands on them," Gus said airily. He said nothing more, his smirk was enough. He leaned against a wall as Spectra walked up to the computer built into it.

"And just think–" he says, opening the latest files on Profesor Clay's research. "–Of the _power_ we could obtain from it!"

"Do you have a plan in mind, Master?"

"A few, but all of them are risky." He turns to his most loyal follower, asking a question he already knows the answer to. "Would you follow me to danger, Gus?"

Without question or hesitation, and a hand to his heart, he replies. "Forever, Master Spectra."

His Master smiles at him, and Gus knows he's done the right thing.


	9. Abecedarian

Runo woke up with Julie's hair on her face and Alice's feet poking into her ribcage.

The first thought that passed through her sleep-addled mind was that she was in a sleepover, so she got up, thinking she should go help Alice's grandfather with the food.

It was only when she turned her head about an inch to the left and looked out the rhombus-shaped window to see basketball sized blobs of water floating, suspended in mid-air, that she was hit with the realization of where exactly she was.

Runo shoved her face in her hands and groaned quietly, despondently wondering how she could be so oblivious.

She shook herself once the taste of her own morning breath became too annoying to ignore. She resolved to find a bathroom and at least rinse if she couldn't brush.

She began picking her way through her friends, sprawled across the ground over the thick bed sheets they had spread over the floor. All of them were still in yesterday's clothes, too tired from all the excitement to even think about changing.

She finally got through the door, to smell… What the heck, it smelled like a mixture of fruit roll-ups, pancakes and pepper. She poked her head into what she now knew to be the kitchen, and watched as the three Vestals all made some sort of mixture. It looked like they had done this a lot, since they already had a system in place. Ace measuring things, then giving the ingredients to Mira, who mixed them, poured it on rectangular molds, and then put them in the… Runo was just going to assume that was an oven. It was Baron who took out the finished food (what looked like loaves), cut them and arranged them on a large serving plate.

Ace was the first one to notice her staring.

"Are you going to stay there like a creep, or are you going to come in?" he says, and then immediately looks back to his task. Baron, however, does the opposite.

"Good morning, Mistress!" Baton waved with a...butterknife? It's as round as a pizza cutter but just a blade without a wheel.

"Mornin…" Runo walked over to Baron, since he seemed the least busy and the most eager to help her get a glass of water.

"We're almost done with breakfast." Mira said over her shoulder as Baron offered Runo a slice of Vestal Mystery Loaf. "Do you think you could wake everyone else up? Runo? Please?"

"Sure thing, Mira." Runo said thickly, finishing the slice she'd been given in two bites. The flavor was about as strong as the smell, synthetically fruity and weirdly spicy. She gagged, unused to the flavor but determined not to spit it out in Baron's face. Seeing her reaction, Baron offered her a bright pink hand-sized 'bottle' of fruit-juice to wash it down with. The flavor of the 'Gourund Drops' reminded Runo vaguely of an kale smoothie she once had, with a dash of papaya that she had tried at a completely different time. By which she meant it tasted like Lettuce That Hates You and fruity vomit.

"Runo, are you going...?"

Runo nodded, with teary eyes and bloated cheeks. She swallowed, coughed, and turned tail and went back the way she came, Baron following and looking a bit panicked.

Mira scraped the rest of the batter into the mold, half-filling it. She put it in the oven next to a half finished loaf and took out the two that were already done, cutting them up and precariously arranging them on the already full platter.

Ace was already putting the used dishes in the dishwasher while Mira put the finishing touches on Baron's arrangement. She set the whole thing down on the table and got a stack of plates and more Gourund Drops to set up around the table.

Just as she was taking out the last loaves and shaking them out of their molds, the brawlers began to trickle into the kitchen, stretching and yawning.

"G'mornin." Dan slurred, sitting heavily at the table to rub his eyes and yawn like a cat. Shun said nothing and sat down beside him.

Runo came back, glancing at the empty spot next to Dan as she pulled Mira aside, sounding worried. Ace didn't quite catch what they were saying, but Mira lead her to the pantry so they could both dig around, and Ace figured they were getting utensils or more Drops.

Julie was next, carrying a still-asleep Marucho in her arms. She set him down to lean on Shun and sat on Dan's other side. Dan was chewing a large bite of breakfast loaf with a strange expression, which Shun and Julie mirrored almost perfectly when they sampled the platter in front of them.

Ace closed the dishwasher door and was about to grab a plate for himself when he noticed...something...standing in the kitchen doorway.

Two sunken, bloodshot eyes stared out from behind a tangled curtain of orange hair. The figure they belonged to was white as a sheet, slouched over, and breathing in ragged sighs.

" **Co...ffeeee…."** Alice moaned, taking one step forward at a terrified Ace.

"Alice! I got coffee!" Runo rushed back to her friend's side, brandishing a package of Caffy Gummys. "Here, check it out. On New Vestroia they're like, candies!"

Runo ripped open the package and poured some out into Alice's cupped hand. She turned to the spot where she had planned to sit, clenching her jaw when she saw Julie had stolen her place, leaving Alice to ungracefully shove the handful of caffeine-laced gummy cubes into her face. She felt a little bit better when she saw everyone's reactions to the flavor of breakfast, though.

"Didja try the Gourund Drop?" Runo asked slyly. Marucho grabbed it and drained about half before he clapped a hand over his mouth and ran to the sink.

"Hey! Gross, I just washed that!" Ace yelled from his seat while Runo nearly fell over laughing.

"Never a dull moment with these humans," Wilda observed.

"I suppose not," Mira chuckled, though she sounded more worried than usual.

Breakfasts' mess was cleaned up a bit slower than it was made. Ace explained how to use the dishwasher to a surprisingly large audience, and the table was wiped down to such a shine that Mira almost didn't notice that the humans had just swept all the crumbs to the floor.

But eventually, everything was clean and Mira called everyone to the place the Resistance had been using as a meeting room until now. There were barely enough seats for everyone in there, and all the bakugan hopped onto a coffee table off to the side. The humans, bakugan and members of her own resistance gathered together was a sight that made Mira stand taller.

"So, the first meeting of the Bakugan Battle Brawler's Resistance will now commence!" cheerfully exclaimed Baron as he stepped up to the Control Center with a goofy march. Nemus followed him, sending a few sparking illusions from his wings that shimmered like fireworks. Though, coming off his ballform it looked more like a handheld sparkler.

This earned them a few laughs from the humans, and Mira couldn't help the small smile that came over her face, and the fond, exasperated look Ace sent his way.

She used that confidence to go up to the front of the room, and as she walked, the shutters came down on the windows, throwing the room into darkness, only for holograms to burst into life on every closed window.

Mira sent an approving nod to Ace, who was manning the projections, and Baron, who was busy looking for the footage they had prepared while the humans were asleep.

"We'll begin with the basics. How much do all of you know about the situation?" asks Mira, looking to the humans.

For some reason, Dan raised this hand in the air and kept it there.

"Only that the Vestals just came out of _nowhere_ and started capturing Bakugan like huge douchenozzles!"

Wilda winced at that. The humans sent dirty looks at Dan for his declaration, Runo especially. It was Shun who spoke up, though.

"Dan," he deadpanned, looking at Dan with a stoic expression. "have you ever heard of a thing called tact?"

"Of course I have!"

"Then use it."

Shun turned to look at the holos again, ignoring Dan's sputtered outrage with a small smirk on his face. The smirk didn't last much though, when he saw the image projected.

"Hydranoid!" cried out Alice, staring at the picture with growing horror, eyes flickering from one detail to the next. "What did they do to him!?"

"Tigrerra and Skyress might suffer a similar fate if we do not locate their respective whereabouts soon," Gorem said, not noticing how Baron's shoulders drooped.

Mira winced at the stab of guilt that lanced through her heart, but she had to push through it. The only way she could atone for what had happened was to fix what she could. She had already come this far. She couldn't stop now.

"This image," began Mira, pointing at it. "Was taken approximately a year ago. This was part of a government project codenamed 'Project Surplus', which had the goal to find a source of energy for 'Project Colony'. And they found it."

Darkus Hydranoid, frozen in his struggle, stood out in the picture. His jaws were caught in a soundless scream, chains pulled taut– some of them even snapped– in his fight for freedom. Yet, already more than half his body was shining in unnatural gold.

"As you may know, Bakugan have naturally a surplus of energy, which they normally burn through battle. It's like their version of exercise; not doing so leads to a whole slew of health problems," continues Mira, right as a hand went up.

"Oh! Oh!" Marucho waved his hand around. "Preyas mentioned something like this! He said that the partner a Bakugan chooses for battle is really important, both allies and enemies! The ally-type partners are a Bakugan's chosen human and their Bakugan mate, and they also have rival-type partners...to regularly fight...with…" Marucho realised that all eyes had turned to him and trailed off in embarrassment.

"Well, it's a bit simplified," Percival offered. "But all of it is true."

Baron helpfully changes the image from Hydranoid's struggle, into a Bakugan arena, shining gently in the sun. This hadn't been an image Mira stole from her father's computers, like Hydranoid's, but an image she took the day she entered her first Bakugan tournament.

"Vestal scientists managed to invent technology which could capture the energy expelled by Bakugan and transform it into electricity. Bakugan battles suddenly became government-sponsored, and Bakugan tournaments opened up everywhere in Vestal and New Vestroia. Bakugan brawling went from a subculture to a planet-wide phenomenon practically overnight, and the Colonies, once they were built, were all built around Bakugan brawling."

The image changed, still showing the Bakugan arena, this time from a different angle, which revealed–

"Wait, is that Hydranoid!?" screamed Julie, pointing at the golden statue set in the entrance of the arena. Vestals passed beside it without so much as a glance.

Mira nodded.

Alice's quiet sobs and Runo's whispered comforts were the only two sounds in the room.

"When a Bakugan is trapped in the statue, the coating of the statue syphons off their energy, leaving the Bakugan with barely enough to survive, which in turn forces the Bakugan into a sort of hibernation. That energy is then used to power 75% of the Dimension Controller. The remaining 25% is taken from Bakugan battles, which are also used to power the rest of the city."

"Are Hydranoid and Preyas the only Bakugan trapped like this?" Shun asked in a low voice.

"What? Preyas?" Panic was rising in Marucho's voice. "He was captured?!"

"As of now? Yes, those two are the ones who are confirmed to have been caught and put on display," says Ace, with a frown on his face. "But I would bet the entire trailer that in two days a statue of a Haos Tigrerra is going to be placed on Alpha City's arena."

"The reason why is simple," continues Mira with gritted teeth, almost as if the words had to be ground out of her mouth to get out. "Vestals can't tell the statues are living Bakugan, but other Bakugan _can_. It's a warning, to all Bakugan, that if they don't submit they'll end up like that."

Mira pauses.

She takes in Ace's rigid shoulders, Wilda's aura of anger, Runo's almost-growl, the steel in Julie's eyes, Drago's stiff posture… every single sentient being in the room recognizes just how _wrong_ the situation is.

And through the anger floating in the room, something bubbles up Mira's chest, something she'd thought she'd never feel again.

Hope.

"In approximately five Rotations we will reach Alpha City. The plan, in theory, is simple." The images on-screen change to an open document where the Resistance had been hashing out plans and throwing them away for _weeks._ "Three teams. One of them will be the distractions. The Bakugan Tournament is about to begin in Alpha City, and the idea is for this group to get in the Tournament, and when the time comes, destroy the Dimension Controller and fend off the Vexos as best they can."

"I'm the leader of that team," announces Ace, glancing back with a smug smirk on his face. Dan looks like he wants to argue, but a slap over the head from Runo and a raised eyebrow from Shun manage to keep him silent.

"The second team is in charge of finding the Bakugan Storage Facility. Once the Dimension Controller is offline, all Bakugan there should be outside of the Facility. That many Bakugan enlarging at the same time could destroy a big part of the city, and that's the last thing we want."

"I'm in charge of that!" Baron announces, with a smile from ear to ear.

"The third team will be the ones in charge of finding the Control Room for the Bakugan Containment System. This is the most important team. The Dimension Controller can't be destroyed unless it's off. Tigrerra can't be saved if the energy-draining system isn't off. The Bakugan can't be taken out the Storage System if it isn't off. If this team fails, everything would have been for nothing," Mira pauses and takes a deep breath.

"I'm the leader of that team," she says, feeling the weight of that responsibility on her shoulders.

"We'll choose who goes where later. Right now, our main task is getting all of you into the swing of things, and just getting acquainted with each other," declared Mira, as the humans started grinning, apparently looking forward to being part of the Resistance. (Though Shun didn't show much emotion. Was that normal for him?)

Ace stands up from his console, and turns to glare at the humans with his hands on his hips. "Now that's done, would any of you please tell me what this ridiculous 'fighting without a Gauntlet' thing is about?"

Arguing explodes in the room. Shun rolls his eyes and stands up to leave. Marucho is trying and failing to explain the situation using too many indecipherable terms, Alice is saying something about card strategies and team balance, Julie is talking about throwing with wild hand gestures, Dan is insisting above all of it that nothing matters except what you _feel_ in _your heart_ in the _heat of the battle_ and Runo is screaming at him to shut up because he knows nothing about brawling aside from spamming abilities.

Mira feels a headache coming on.

'For the good of the Bakugan,' she reminds herself, and enters the fight to naively try to referee it.

Wilda and Nemus notice Drago and Percival waving them over from their table and hop off their minlin's shoulders to see what they want, leaving them to try and fail to reign in the arguing humans.

"Is there something you wanted to tell us?" Nemus asked.

"Sort of," Drago said with a shrug. "Mira said it herself, we have five Rotations to train and prepare. While our brawlers sort out their end, why don't we have our own discussion?"

"Starting with how you three brawl," Gorem offered, turning to Percival, Wilda and Nemus. "How have you three been fighting battles thus far? Does your brawler dictate your actions or are you going with your own instinct?"

"I'd have to say I go with my own instinct, Mira usually just activates abilities for anything I can't just smash," Wilda beings conversationally. "Mira is a great partner, and she really does know how to go along with my instincts pretty well. Her fighting style a bit different from mine, but we make it work."

"Different in what sense?" asks Drago, who then glances back at the fight, sighs at Dan's loud yelling, and turns back to the conversation.

"Her fighting style is… shifty? Like she's a thinker and cunning, and that's kind of difficult to pull off when my moveset is really attack-y. So normally I take the lead so she can think of ways to trick our opponents."

"I had the opposite problem with Dan at the beginning. He would just throw in whichever Bakugan with the highest G's and hit the opponent with as many Abilities as he could."

The four remaining Bakugan groaned in sympathy, and Nemus even wobbled to him to pat him on the back.

"Has he learned from his mistakes? Or is he too stubborn to improve?" asks Percival gesturing with his head towards the kid in question, who is _still_ loudly arguing.

"He had improved, back before our separation. Not dramatically, but he had improved. Now… I don't know," admits Drago, the weight of the three years spent apart dragging on his shoulders.

"They've grown though," interjects Gorem. "I hadn't realized how young our partners were when we were first here, but now that I see them after all this time… they really are only children."

"And it shows," Percival begins. "Ace is far too conflictive, Mira too liable to get caught in her own head, Baron is too insecure in his own skills–"

"The way you all are talking, it sounds like we'll have to train our minlin!" Nemus jokes.

"Yes," Gorem immediately agrees, to Nemus' surprise. "That is a very distinct possibility."

Nemus is taken aback by this for a moment. Though, after thinking about it, he supposes he shouldn't be. Percival has been telling him from the start that Baron isn't the one on the battlefield and Nemus should act like it sometimes, but...

"I usually just do what Baron says." Nemus admits. "He's the one with the cards and strategy, after all."

"And you, Percival?" Drago asked.

"Depends. Ace and I kind of have a bit of teamwork involved in our brawling style," comments Percival, with a twitch of his hand that would have been a flourish had he not been a ball at the moment. "Depending on how strong the opponent is, either I'll move first and take them out as quick as possible or I'll wait for Ace to activate and ability or open the Gate and try to derive what strategy he's going for from there. We even have a kind of sign-language code-thing for certain moves or cards."

"A sign language?" Drago seemed intrigued.

"Well, it's' sometimes a visual cue, sometimes verbal, it's meant to keep the play secret until it's executed. It's sometimes more helpful than having your minlin shout the name of the ability card every time, but it's hard for me to remember that stuff in the heat of battle."

"Baron and I have been trying to do something similar," Nemus offered. "But it's much more simple than what Ace and Percival have."

"Hey, our code was really simple in the beginning, too! It's only gotten complicated because we're used to it."

"Perhaps you and Baron don't need a code at all?" Wilda suggested. "Mira and I do just fine without one."

"It really just comes down to–" Drago was abruptly cut off by Dan grabbing Drago off the table and brandishing him at Runo.

"Well, why don't you put your money where your mouth is, huh?!" Dan shouted as Runo grabbed Nemus.

"It's ON Kuso!" She shouted back, but Nemus and Drago wriggled out of their grips.

"Excuse me." Drago sounded more than just a bit miffed. "But we were trying to have a conversation."

"I–I'd rather you gave me some warning before initiating a battle, Mistress," Nemus quietly states.

"Oh, c'mon Drago! I just need to beat her once!"

"Dan, I said no."

"It's just one battle–"

"Daniel I am not a toy!"

The humans flinched as a group. The Vestals were not far behind.

Nemus watches wide-eyed as Dan was left speechless for a second, then guilt flashed across his face. He began apologizing, not really completing a sentence.

This strikes Nemus as odd. He doesn't know why. Why would a brawler apologizing to his Bakugan be odd to him? If. If Nemus refused to fight, would Baron apologize to him?

He would. Baron's too soft not to.

But Nemus' old Mistress wouldn't have. He barely even remembers her, but he knows she wouldn't have. She wouldn't even have heard him.

Nemus shakes himself out of his grim thoughts and wobbles over to Baron, jumping into his pocket and burrowing in, much to Baron's confusion.

"What were you guys talking about?" Alice asks, kneeling by the table.

"Ah, I think it was what our different strategies are?" Wilda said, looking perhaps a bit intimidated.

"We were going to move on to what we each think we should focus on during the training we will be partaking in for the next five Rotations." Gorem said confidently, making Wilda feel just a bit better.

"That will have to wait for later!" says Mira, clapping to get everyone's attention. "For now, we still have to figure out living arrangements."

There's a collective groan among the Resistance, both human and minlin alike.

Mira glares, maybe to show she's serious, maybe to say 'this is payback for that argument you put us all through.' So, slowly, very slowly, people get up to deal with the situation.

As they go, Mira watches them with a straight back, and determined eyes.

'Whatever it takes,' she thinks, as questions and answers begin to fly above the heads of the Resistance. 'Whatever it takes to free the Bakugan I will do it.'

"Hey Mira, how do you feel about sharing a room?"

"...Wait no-"


	10. Road Trip

On the First Rotation of the trip to Alpha City, Ace tried to coach Dan in 'shouldertop brawling', where the minlin rides on their Bakugan's shoulder. Dan was already familiar, but both he and Drago were rustier than they realised. Their exercise was to keep pace with the Resistance base in its tank form, but when it got to the point where Percival had to catch Dan when he flew off an embarrassingly distracted Drago, Mira ordered them to stop and come back inside, where Mira was explaining Vestal tech to Alice and Marucho and Baron was teaching Julie and Runo to drive the tank.

Around lunch, they made a stop by an Aquos Patch to drop off Abis Omega. Hexstar and Sylfee both agreed to temporarily partner with Runo and Alice respectively, but Abis didn't want anything to do with the Resistance, and made it clear he didn't want to be used by any minlin again if he could help it.

It wasn't anything personal against the Bakugan, but Marucho still felt a little downtrodden when the only Bakugan from the Patch who was willing to partner up with him turned out to be an overzealous Wontu.

At least they had partnered up almost everyone in time to get some training in. The humans stayed up, training and helping around the base until Julie unexpectedly passed out on a couch and, through some quick calculations by Marucho, they realised they had all been awake for 20 hours straight. The Vestals were hit by just how vast the differences in their internal clocks were when the humans all woke up again just as they were starting to think of making dinner.

The humans were given the decision to either keep driving the base or to get some training in while the Vestals slept. They at first chose to keep the base moving for awhile, but eventually cabin fever got to the ground-bound Bakugan in their team and they settled the base down in building mode to get some practise in.

The 'morning' of the second rotation, Mira offered to drive Shun to a nearby Ventus Patch to find a temporary partner while Alice, Runo and Marucho got used to battling with their new partners. Shun declined, forcefully, saying that his ninja skills would be sufficient for the mission he was given until he could reunite with Skyress.

"Do you realize that means you won't have a partner until _after_ we take back Alpha City?" reasoned Mira, or at least tried to, since the only thing she got in return was a piercing glare.

Since she couldn't change his mind, she went by herself on her motorcycle, and found a Bakugan named Shadowwing who was willing to partner up with Shun, if he came and asked himself. Having done all she could, Mira returned, told Shun of the development, and ordered the base to cast off.

Dan didn't fall off of Drago while training this time, even when Mira and Flybeetle shot a few pebbles at him to throw him off. They had a harder time though, since Sylfee was also joining their practice and taking up a bit of airspace while they all tried to keep inside the base's cloak.

The humans went to sleep earlier than yesterday, waking up just in time for lunch, and this time nobody gagged, or forgot how to work the dishwasher. Everyone reviewed the plan, listened to the Vestal's recounts of events and locations when they were awake, ran simulations of how to deal with guards and the Bakugan normally used by them, and trained like hell to prepare for the big day.

Things followed this pattern for awhile. Nothing of note really happened until the 'evening' of the Third Rotation, when the humans were for the most part asleep.

The base was driving through a region where Darkus Patches were plentiful. Glittering, starry night skies occasionally shone through the windows of the base, but never longer than a few minutes. It seemed to emphasize how gray and featureless the cloudy New Vestroian skies were without the Patches roaming its landscape and giving the planet form.

Mira, Baron and Ace switched out driving the tank and tending to other matters within the base, or just slacking off and staring out the window. It was Mira's turn driving when Ace noticed a silhouette in the doorway leading to the barracks.

"Well, look who's up," he scoffed. "You need help finding the bathrooms, Kazami?"

Normally, Shun wouldn't even dignify Ace's comment with an eye roll. But as much as he hated to admit it, he did need something. And he wasn't sure who else to ask.

"If it's not too much trouble," Shun sighed, looking down at a scrap of paper he had accidentally crumpled in his hands. "I need help with a riddle."

"A riddle?" Mira glanced over he shoulder, but snapped her eyes back to the road a moment later. "Hey, Wilda, can you go see…?" she was answered by a soft snore from the cupholder. Wilda was splayed out in the cotton-lined bottom, tuckered out from the day's training. Mira sighed, not having the heart to disturb her partner, and instead resolved to keep an ear out as Shun showed Baron and Ace what he had written down.

Ace took the paper, flipped it over, held it closer to his face, held it far away from his face, and then declared: "I don't understand _anything."_

Shun's eyebrows shot up for a second, ready to snark back to Ace, but then he made the connection. "So you Vestals can't understand our writing, the same way we can't understand yours."

"Wait, wait, wait," interrupted Baron. "You can't understand it? At all?"

Shun frowned, looking at Baron with disbelief. "Of course we can't. I thought that was obvious."

"It isn't obvious at all," sniped back Ace, looking exasperated.

"Why the hell do you think would we ask 'which one is the on button on the control panel' _ten times each_ , if we couldn't just read which one it is?" deadpans Shun, crossing his arms over his chest, eyes narrowing.

"Well so–rry for not knowing how human brains work! We've only known each other for Three Rotations!"

"Eight days should be enough to notice _we can't read_."

"They're not! Also, your time measurements make absolutely no sense! Day this, day that. How in the royal's shit are your circadian rhythms so short?!"

"Guys! That's enough," interrupts Mira, still sitting at the base's wheel. (Not that it _had_ an actual wheel, mind you.)

Beside Shun, Baron lets out a relieved sigh, and bounces back to ask Shun with puppy-like excitement: "What's the riddle then?"

Shun takes a deep breath, and reads out-loud: "There are five main hideouts, each of them lead by one of the new Soldiers, unless they've been captured. Pyrus will always be where history is greatest, Ventus where wisdom is found, Subterra where the fort's wall is the thickest, Haos will go where the sun leads, and Aquos where the tide flows to. Darkus will be avenged, of that the five promise."

"Well that's kind of obvious," drawls Ace. "It's just the places where each hideout is!"

"I know that," shoots back Shun. "But I don't know the terrain as well as you Vestals do, so I have no idea where those places _are."_

"You're talking as if those places were fixed!" interrupts Baron, wilting for a second under the annoyed look Ace shoots him. Nevertheless, he continues: "The hideouts are always moving! Bakugan have always been nomadic, so the riddle just tells you where the hideouts _could_ be and not where they are!"

From Baron's pocket, Nemus wakes up, mumbles "that's right", gives a little nod and goes right back to sleep.

Shun stares at Baron for a second, impressed by his knowledge, but then the problem makes itself evident.

"If the riddle only tells where they _could_ be, how do we know where they _are?_ "

"We don't know," answers Ace, looking as if just saying the words annoyed him. "This is the most a Bakugan has ever told us about the hideouts, ever."

Shun sighs, slowly and deliberately, before turning back towards the door and saying to himself: "At least I know where Skyress could be now."

"Eh?! How do you know?" shoots Ace at Shun's already retreating back.

"That's kind of obvious," shoots back Shun, paraphrasing Ace's earlier words. "Skyress is hiding in the _mountains."_

"There's this Ventus Patch that's set to collide with a Subterra one in between Alpha and Beta City," comments Mira, looking at a zoomed-out holographic map from the corner of her eye. "If I were Skyress, I would definitely set up the hideout there while it lasts. If you want, we could send Percival and Ace to check it out before we raid Alpha City?"

"...He left," Baron said quietly, not quite intending for his voice to echo in the large, empty Control Room the way it did.

Ace crossed his arms and fell back into his seat. "It's fine, we didn't need that dumb riddle."

"Skyress was the only Soldier we hadn't heard anything about," Mira reminded Baron. "so we got what we needed from it."

She meant to reassure Baron, but her words didn't quite quell his unease. He sat down by Ace and his window seat as they fell back into silence.

"Ace…?" Baron asked quietly, after a moment. "Are we...ready for this?"

Ace was quiet for such a long time after Baron's question that he thought he was ignoring him. But after a few painfully silent moments,

"We will be."

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Afternoon of the Fourth Rotation,

"Ability Activate! Clay Wall!" shouted Mira, and Dan whooped in encouragement when the card lit up with an orange shimmer, and the ground rose up in front of Wilda on command.

Mira looked with bafflement for a second at the card in her hand, glowing despite being totally free of a Guantlet's encasement, and then promptly wobbled and tripped. Marucho was already beside her, only wincing once when she used his head to steady herself.

"The exhaustion is to be expected," began Marucho, smiling sheepishly at Mira. "It gets better after a while, but be careful not to overdo it. It can lead to fainting spells and slight fever if it gets out of hand."

Mira took a moment to catch her breath then straightened herself up and asked: "Talk from experience?"

Marucho blinks and shakes his head. "No, not me. My parents would have noticed if I came back exhausted way too often." He trails off, a look of worry passing through his face.

Dan very much doesn't like that look on Marucho's face, so he says the first thing that comes through his mind: "Nah, I'm the one experienced with that." It's only after it comes out of his mouth that he realizes just how stupid it makes him look, but there's no taking it back now. And, most importantly, Marucho doesn't look like he's going to overthink himself into oblivion.

"You did give us quite a scare," remarks Marucho, who then sighs when Mira's weight is finally off him.

"What can I say? I brawl way too hard!"

Marucho giggles and Mira smiles in amusement.

"Why does that happen, though?" Mira suddenly states, a hand coming to rest at her chin. "I thought the Gauntlets transmitted energy into the cards, which then activated the Ability in the Bakugan. But if the Gauntlets aren't necessary, then where does the energy come from?"

"Huh, that's a great question," mumbles Marucho. "Why did they make Gauntlets in the first place?"

"Because… I don't know. I think my– Professor Clay investigated all of that, but no one really has access to those documents."

"Really? That's a shame. If we know why they thought Gauntlets worked in the first place, then maybe we can pinpoint why they don't work. Unless there's something we don't know about this whole thing in which case–"

Dan, who had up to this point watched their conversation like one might watch a ping pong match, decides he should leave those two to their brain-babble and starts wandering off.

The Patch they're in is apparently a weird combination of Haos and Pyrus where everything is at least shiny, tinged red or yellow. There are a few plants that look more like half-made glass sculptures, slowly dripping and remaking themselves.

Dan gives in to temptation and uses his Gauntlet to take a photo, practically the only thing the Brawlers are using them for. He takes a second to walk around a white, sluggishly-crawling patch of earth. Mira showed them what those could do by dropping a piece of metal on one, and then watched how it melted in a few seconds.

"Dan," pipes up Drago from his pocket. "Aren't you straying a bit too far?"

"Relax, bud. They can still hear me if something goes wrong. I mean, it's not like I walked far."

"I know, but I don't like being this out in the open." It's pretty difficult to tell when a Bakugan is tense when they're in ball form, but Dan knows Drago's tells by heart at this point. If he sounds growly, then it's a safe bet he's not comfortable at all.

"Then how about I take three more photos and we go back? How does that sound?"

No response.

"Huh? Drago?" says Dan, poking gently at his pocket, raising his eyebrows when he notices Drago's tucked himself in to a perfect sphere.

"Excuse me–"

Dan whirls around to face where the voice came from, surprised to see somebody in a brown cloak. It was one thing for Mira to tell them that cloaks were an in-fashion thing for Vestals, another was to see it for himself.

"Do you know where the nearest Aquos Patch is? I'm running out of water," the stranger says, taking advantage of Dan's momentary confusion.

"Uuuh," hesitates Dan, but then makes up his mind and says: "It's over there", pointing with his hand.

"Would you accompany me?" asks the stranger, moving closer. It's then that Dan can make out blue hair pulled into a tight ponytail, and a pair of goggles resting over the other guy's eyes.

"Sure!" agrees Dan, and both of them begin walking in an awkward silence.

Dan is making a path in his head that takes them to the Aquos Patch as far away from the Base as possible, when the stranger asks: "What are you doing out in the wilderness, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I'm just on a camping trip!" Dan says with a confidence he doesn't feel. The stranger doesn't seem to notice his lie. "And you?"

"Oh, I'm simply taking some soil samples for research. Testing the terrain, you know?"

Dan doesn't, so he nods and hopes the guy stops talking.

"Do you brawl?" says the stranger, because of course he keeps talking, and points towards the Gauntlet on Dan's arm.

"Not really. This is just for safety for the whole wild thing," says Dan, just like they practiced back at the Base. He needed to thank Mira _so much_ for teaching them how to lie at least semi-convincingly.

"Ah, yes. I imagine dealing with wild Bakugan must be a priority out here," says the stranger, flicking his hand out briefly towards the glass forest.

"What, no! They're harmless! There's not really a difference between "wild" Bakugan and "tame" Bakugan!" retorts Dan before he really understands what he's saying.

"Interesting… "

Crap. He messed it up, didn't he?

"Are you, by any chance–" please don't say traitor, please don't say traitor. "– not in accordance with the Crown?"

… oh come on!

"Uuuuh," is the only thing Dan can think to say.

The stranger laughs, far too harmoniously for what he _just_ said. Didn't Mira say that most Vestals are super loyal to the crown?!

"Oh, don't worry. Nobody is listening to us," says the stranger, and looks off to the distance. "It's rare to find someone else that doesn't idolize the Crown, someone else that doesn't buy into their empty promises."

The stranger turns and smiles at Dan. "We don't agree with the Crown on some things–" wait, 'we'? "–and that's very dangerous. But, as they say, there's strength in numbers."

There's a drawn-out silence where Dan is trying to come up with an answer, and in the end he settles for: "who is we?"

"You'll know soon enough," says the stranger, in the single most unhelpful answer Dan has ever heard in his entire life. "If you or your group ever decide to go against the Crown or the Vexos–" Dan starts, and he's very sure he's not mentioned the Vexos in this conversation at all. "–You might have us as your allies. I think you'll find there are some things the Crown and the Vexos did, things that they took away, that they should pay for. Until all of you make up your minds, do pretend to hate us."

The guy then keeps on walking, and Dan breaks out of his daze to yell: "Hey! Who are you!"

He doesn't even stop, and Dan runs towards him, hoping to catch up.

The stranger then makes a turn on a glass tree, and when Dan finally turns the corner too, he's nowhere to be seen.

"What the heck just happened," says Dan, still looking around for the guy.

"I don't know, Dan," pipes up Drago from his coat pocket. "But we better go back to Base. I don't trust that wanderer."

"What are you, a geezer? Who says "wanderer" anymore," says Dan, already turning back towards the Resistance's base.

"Daniel, I am not human nor a child. I speak how I speak. And what are you doing taking the direct path to the Base?! That strange minlin could be following us for all we know!"

"Okay! Okay, I get it!"

The whole walk back to the Base is passed with the usual round of insults and comebacks, but Dan can't let himself relax. First the Vexos offering a truce, then this rando proposing an alliance. What is this, a political drama?

Just what the heck are they getting themselves into?


	11. Welcome to Alpha City!

When Baron announced they were nearing a Haos/Darkus patch on the morning of the Fifth and final rotation, Alice had no idea what to expect.

"So, the Haos patches are like mini suns," Alice mused, sitting on the same couch Runo was reclining on, Runo's feet in her lap. It was below one of the trailers many sunroofs, and they had been assured it was one of the best spots to watch the 'show'. "And the Darkus Patches are like mini patches of night time where you can see the stars…"

"I really think you'll like this place, Mistress." Nemus hopped onto Runo's shoulder. "Baron and I would come out here all the time."

Runo said nothing, her eyes still focused on the blue skies beyond the plexiglass. It slowly began to turn orange, then pink, as though the sun was setting on Earth.

The trailer went over what felt like a speed bump, and suddenly they were in the Patch.

Runo gasped and sat up. The stars were twinkling, brighter than she had ever seen them. Not only that, but ribbons of green light snaked across the alien constellations, dappling the trailer inside and out in phosphorescent neon colors.

"Aurora Borealis," Alice breathed, standing up to join Runo in looking out the window.

"You mean the Green Ribbons?" Nemus asked in surprise. "Minlin really do have names for everything."

The dappled light fell on the two Bakugan resting on the table instead of their temporary partner's shoulders. Sylfee was staring up at the twinkling stars, deep in thought.

"You alright?" Hexstar asked gruffly. Sylfee pulled their head out of the clouds and shrugged.

"Look, I know you're here because you want revenge on the Vexos." Hexstar sighed, trying again to get Sylfee to spill anything more than the same stiff formalities over and over. "But I don't know if you're being fair to that not-vestal minlin you're partnered with. She didn't do anything to you, she's actually fighting for your freedom!"

"I'm fighting for my freedom, Hexstar," Sylfee said, softly. "She's going to load cards into a Gauntlet and order me around."

Hexstar stumbled over a few responses, then fell silent for a few moments. "At least these guys are on our side," she finally muttered, too little, too late.

"Oh, Ru~no!" Julie called from the next room. "Get over here, it's your turn!"

"Her...turn?" Baron wondered aloud as Runo got up.

"My turn," she confirmed with a mysterious smile, and left towards Julie's verbal beckoning.

Baron kept his eyes on the road, still confused. Alice scooted to the side as Dan came back, but he shook his head and put a shoosh ing finger to his smiling lips. He walked up to the back of Baron's chair as quietly as he could, and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, Baron, mind letting me have a turn behind the wheel?"

"Oh yeah, go ahead master DaaaAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH?!" Baron screamed and slammed the brakes, jolting the entire base and everyone in it as Baron leapt from the controls in shock.

Alice was flung from her chair by the abrupt stop, but she didn't mind. She found herself trying to stifle the giggling that fell from her lips at Baron's mute, wild flailing, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

"BARON DON'T YOU DARE DO THAT AGAIN, DID YOU HEAR ME?! JULIE ALMOST POKED MY EYE OUT BECAUSE OF YOU!" screams Runo from the other room, and Baron snaps out of his surprise to wilt for a second. But then he bounces back and sits back on the controls.

While the base begins to pick up speed again, Baron asks: "Master Dan, why do you look like a Vestal?!"

"'Cuz we're on a mission Baron! We can't just waltz in looking like aliens into Alpha City, so Julie's helping us to look like you guys!" answers Dan, striking a dramatic pose. "I'm looking pretty good, right?"

Alice has to admit Julie did a pretty good job. Dan's hair no longer looks soft and fluffy, like human hair, instead spiked up in a hundred directions. He's even wearing what looks to be ear prosthetics, to make them look pointed. The most interesting thing, however, are his eyes.

"Does Julie have contact lenses for this?" asks Alice, looking mystified at the dull appearance of Dan's eyes, almost indistinguishable at a glance from a Vestal's eyes.

"Nah. Apparently she can do this thing with eyeshadow colors to make your eyes look different. No contact lenses needed! Took her a few tries though. You should have seen Shun, he was the guinea pig. Ended up looking like one too!"

Dan bursts into snickers and plops himself down on the couch.

"At least I didn't complain the entire time, Dan."

Alice shrieks and whirls around to see Shun leaning against the back of her chair, arms crossed over his chest. His hair looks absolutely caked with hair gel, trying to make it look pointy instead of its natural flatness. It's pretty lucky he cut his hair before coming to New Vestroia, otherwise they might have run out of gel.

Dan dissolves into laughter, while Shun walks over to sit beside Dan, a smirk of amusement playing in his lips.

"Oh, man Alice! You should have seen your face!" Dan wheezes out. Alice can hear Baron trying to not laugh and keep his eyes on the road, but he isn't having much luck.

"A little warning next time?" meekly asks Alice, trying to calm her racing heart.

"Good luck with that! He's been a sneaky sneak since we were kids. Playing hide and seek with him was a nightmare."

Shun scoffs. "You weren't much better. Every time you got found you tried to fight me, and then pestered me so I would teach you some 'ninja moves'."

"Your ninja moves are cool, dude. But I regret asking you that. You're a terrible teacher."

Shun swats at Dan's head and turns to look out the window, a small, soft smile hidden by his hand.

"Alice!" screeches Runo, coming into the room, her hair set in a high ponytail that looks uncomfortably tight, probably so they didn't have to put hair gel on that part of her hair. "It's your turn now!"

Alice walks out the room, briefly passing by Marucho trying to explain something about his smartphone to Ace. It's only once she enters Julie's room and finds herself surrounded on all sides by beauty products, both human and Vestal alike, that her nerves try to sneak up on her.

Her mind whirls with worst-case scenarios, each one worse than the last, while she feels Julie's precise brushstrokes on her face. Her heart beats like mad in her chest while she puts on the soft, cream-colored jacket Mira lent her for the occasion.

She's part of the team that's going after the Bakugan Containment System. Everything will rest on the shoulders of her and her two teammates.

She hopes everything will be alright.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The dome of the Vestal city loomed overhead, catching the light of a Haos patch that a team of uniformed vestals and their Bakugan were trying to chase away with Darkus abilities. They could see a sweeping cityscape enclosed within, how the buildings leaned and clung to each other, connected by sheer contact or by needle-thin pathways that seemingly ant-sized Vestals traversed to go from one complex to the next, stretching like the spindly strings of spider webs across every structure in the skyline. It was certainly alien in every sense of the word.

"It doesn't feel right," Shun said. "Waltzing into the enemy's stronghold without even trying to sneak in."

"We'll be more suspicious if we sneak in past the guards," Alice reminded him. "Act like Vestals, trust authority, right?"

Shun didn't answer. Eventually the silence got so uncomfortable that she edged into Runo and Julie's conversation.

"Are they gonna ask for like, IDs or something?" Runo babbled, the stress clearly getting to her prematurely. "Or maybe scan our fingerprints? Do Vestals have different fingerprints than humans?"

"I dunno," Julie mused, looking at their resident Vestal's hands. "Ours all wear gloves."

"Shouldn't we have more gloves, then?" Alice cut in. "Maybe we should go back and borrow some–"

"You guys are worrying way too much," Wontu laughed from Marucho's pocket. "There's nothing for you minlin to worry about, you just gotta be friendly!"

"True," Mira comments. "Most guards don't expect organized resistance from the general populace. They're mostly looking for petty thieves and rogue Bakugan in ball form, and none of us act like either," she says, checking her list one last time. "They'll probably think we're a group of friends that got the wild fever."

"Uhh, wild fever?" asks Marucho, looking up from his notes of the Bakugan Containment System. "What's that?"

"Vestal doesn't really have wild places anymore," says Ace, eyeing the city with distrust. "The only few places where there's greenery is in farming fields. So when Vestals came to New Vestroia, we had to deal with nature. Most Vestals don't trust the wild, but a few went absolutely crazy for nature and get out of the cities. Most people think they're weird and some kind of cult."

"Huh," mutters Marucho, tugging his lower lip with his hand. "If just getting out of the city makes you weird, than what would we be?"

"Raving lunatics," answers Ace without missing a beat. "We've spent entire an entire Nectal out there without coming back to any city once. We're extreme, even by wild fever standards."

Silence falls on the group as they pass through the gate, not doing anything more than stand around for a second in front of the guards before being let through the gates.

Nostalgia slams into Mira as all of them pass through the first few buildings, made to look like arches over the main road. She'd walked this path every time she got back from practicing brawling with her brother, and both of them would play a silly game where if they were under an arch, they would stop talking, then resume as if nothing happened after passing it.

Mira dips her hand into her pocket, holding on to Wilda for comfort. Wilda uncurls from his ball form and hugs her finger as best he can.

The weight of her sadness lifts for a second and lets her breathe. She whispers a thank you, and straightens her shoulders. A small plaza comes into view, with a statue of the Prince in the middle of it, sitting gracefully on a throne, one finger curled around his hair.

Mira bows to the statue as she passes by out of habit, and thankfully sees the rest of the Resistance, even the humans, follow suit, though their bows are clumsy and unpracticed compared to a Vestal's.

"Alright, we're on a time limit," begins Mira, turning around to face the rest of the Resistance and thankfully noting that nobody in the plaza is paying attention to them. "Does everybody have their lists?"

There's a chorus of affirmation, and Baron and Dan go so far as to raise their own lists and wave them in the air like little children.

"We have three Gittiks-or, uh one and a half hours?" She glances to Marucho for a nod of confirmation. "Yeah okay, an hour and a half to get everything on every list. Humans, please remember to use the directions in your Gauntlets. Once we finish the supply run, meet back up here and we'll carry the supplies into the trailer. Then it's showtime. We can't afford to be late so hurry up!"

Mira is met with scattered cheers, and Dan goes off like a shot, dragging a protesting Runo and resigned Shun behind him. Baron speedwalks with Alice, while Ace and Marucho walk calmly, discussing something about the control panels.

"So? Where are we going?" Julie asks as she hooks her arm around Mira's. Mira jumped at the contact, but quickly relaxed when they didn't get as many stares as she was afraid of.

"We'll be picking up a few repair tools and materials." She said, pointing down the main street. "It shouldn't be too far."

"Oh, fantastic! They aren't too heavy, are they?."

"Not at all." Mira smiled as Julie took a moment to match their paces. "They're small, and I know where to get the best in town."

The streets got busier the further into town they walked. Julie was surprised to notice that the sidewalks were almost twice as wide as the roads with the floating cars, and the farther they went the thicker the crowds got. In no time they were in the shopping district, with advertising storefronts seeming to jostle each other for attention with brightly colored messages and logos and mascots that Julie couldn't read but already knew what they said.

Mira had meant to unhook Julie's arm from hers by the time they came to the parts shop she had been looking for (and she did untangle them before they came up to the window) but for some reason she found their proximity...comforting. She had almost forgotten they were basically holding hands until someone had stepped out of the store and given her and Julie a confused look that her self-consciousness caught up with her.

Julie takes in the parts shop, gushing about how "futuristic" it looks, and then brings up the shopping list on the Gauntlet.

"Alright~" she sings. "What's first on this little list~?"

Mira doesn't answer, instead heading in and gesturing Julie to follow her to a section she knows well. She passes by expensive hoverbike equipment and sidesteps another shopper with a worrying amount of ignition baubles, until she stops on the cheaper part of the store.

Julie stops beside her, and squints with a focused gaze at the packet Mira grabs off the shelf.

"... That says 'material kit', right?" asks Julie, pointing at the metallic writing on the packet.

"Close enough to that anyways," answers Mira, her shoulders tensing up sharply.

"What's next in the list?" Julie bounces in place, looking around the room and sometimes oohing and aahing at anything she finds interesting.

"Basic metal cartridges." Mira begins to fiddle with her necklace, a nervous habit she could never kick despite how many times Keith told her to knock it off.

"Where do we get them?" Julie spins around to face Mira, an excited smile on her face, her blue eyes sparkling.

"Here," says Mira, and takes another one of the packets.

"Lucky! And what's that?" asks Julie, stepping right into Mira's personal space to point at the next item on the list. Mira doesn't mind it much.

"Repair fundamentals."

"And where are they?"

"Right here," she says, taking yet another one of the packets.

Julie blinks, her eyes getting comically wide, before pulling up the list in her Gauntlet, and reading it carefully.

"Wait… is everything on our list just the same thing with a different name?" Julie waves away the list and puts her hands on her hips, her mouth already open to demand answers.

"Julie, I have something to ask of you, and please, don't tell anyone ,"

Julie was taken aback by Mira's change in demeanor. It wasn't sudden, she realised, she just wasn't paying attention to the change. "O...kay?" She said carefully. "What's this about?"

"I need to go to my house. There are some things I need to check." Mira is very aware that not giving specifics is going to make her sound sketchy, but if she wants to pull this off she needs Julie to not know much at all about this.

"Why couldn't you tell everybody? I'm sure a trip to your house would be super fun!"

"Julie," Mira breathes in and steadies herself. "I'm going to steal classified information from the lead Royal Scientist. If we get caught, we wouldn't go to jail. We would get executed," Julie's eyebrows rise sharply, and she gestures so Mira keeps explaining.

"Stealing that is ten times worse than attacking the Dimension Controller and freeing the Bakugan! And any "accomplices" to the theft would also get executed! I can't do that to you or the rest of the Resistance. So please, Julie, just stay here and wait for me, okay?" Mira pleads.

Julie looks at her, face unreadable for a second, before she smiles and says: "Mira you're a dummy."

Mira opens her mouth to argue back, except Julie puts one finger over her mouth and shushes her.

"We'd only get in trouble if we're caught! Plus, you just brought the best actress with you!

"My father thinks I'm just being a stupid teenager and using the Bakugan as an excuse to rebel! He might not report me for class-info theft, but he would report you in a second!" Mira tries to transmit as much worry into her voice as she can.

"Just trust me, ok? I have a plan," says Julie, still smiling and completely unfazed. "Do you have anything you left in your house that you would love to get back?"

"My first pair of brawling gloves. But they're absolutely ripped, so it just would–"

"Ok let's go!" Julie takes MIra's hand and drags her to the door. Three beeps come from Mira's Gauntlet once they step out of it, notifying her of her purchase. "Where's your house?"

"Right there," Mira points towards a building two blocks away. The gleaming metal building is one of the few not connected to other buildings at all, and with a security system composed of both people and machines.

"Oooh, you chose the store on purpose! Sneaky." Julie winks and doesn't let Mira say anything before she's pulled into her old house's direction.

Entering it is far too easy. She simply waves towards one of the patrolling guards, who nods, before waving her Gauntlet over the elevator. Mira doesn't know if to thank her father he didn't register as missing, or be bitter because knowing him, he simply forgot to do that.

The elevator dings, the silver doors opening right into her apartment.

The living room is almost the same as she left it. The stylized glass and metal table sits in the middle of it, always squeaky clean, with four chairs none of them ever used. A collection of sofa chairs sits near the window, which Mira has to consciously remind herself that, unlike the windows in the trailer, it isn't a window at all, just a camera feed projected onto the wall to simulate one.

"It's a lot smaller than I thought! With you being the daughter of the main mad scientist and all," Julie said, her voice echoing in the empty room.

Mira snorts, clapping her hand over her mouth, before she shakes her head. "It isn't small." Mira assured her, putting a hand on one of the chair's headrests. "It's actually pretty big compared to the rest of houses out there."

Mira made a disgusted noise, glaring down at a dead potted plant in one of the cup holders in the armrests.

"He couldn't even be bothered to refill the tank," she grumbled to herself.

"Hey, so," Julie said, trying more to break the awkward silence than anything else. "What should I search for?" says Julie, doing an exaggerated pantomime of someone searching around.

"Anything that looks important that either belongs to my father or my brother," answers Mira without missing a beat. "I'm just going to look at the files in here."

"I'll look around and keep watch, then!"

Mira nods, making a beeline for her father's room, that is for all intents and purposes an office with a bed in it. She hooks her Gauntlet into the terminal, which lights up, recognizing familiar and already-approved software. From there, it's easy to force the protection around her father's and brother's files, quickly pulling up a keyword searcher she'd made up in secret in hopes of finding the files without having to read each one.

There's not much luck. She downloads the blueprints for the Bakugan Containment Center, along with those of the Arena, and the latest procedures on Bakugan Trap synthesizing, but that's about it for useful things.

The rest are lab reports chock-full of technical words that she wished she didn't understand, just so she could forget what happened to the first Bakugan used as power-sources. Mira grit her teeth in frustration, skipping by her brother's xenobiology notes, starting up the keyword searcher again, while carefully deleting traces of her downloads–

"Mira?" Her blood runs cold, instinctively closing the files that would have given away just how far deep in the system she was. "What are you doing here?"

She turns to face her father. He hasn't changed at all. Still the same barely-combed hair and pristine lab coat, under which are comfortable, casual, too simple clothes for someone of his rank.

Mira angles herself to hide her Gauntlet, instead pretending to pick up something from the floor to give her Gauntlet time to unsynch. When she stands straight, her father is frowning at her, as if she's a particularly hard to understand equation.

"Father! I just, I wanted to–" Mira stammers, looking for some kind of excuse, anything at all–

"Miraaaa! I found them!" Julie bursts through the door, her jacket bunched up in one hand and Mira's old gloves dangling from the other, waving the old, worn out pair of gloves like they were a prize."If we hurry up, you can still show me around the Arena! I can't wait to see–"

Julie stops and starts at seeing her father, surprised to see him. If Mira hadn't known Julie at all, she would have thought her surprise and sudden shyness were genuine. Dr. Clay's cutting stare finally broke away from Mira, letting her unhook her gauntlet and stuff it into her jacket.

"Who are you?" He demanded curtly.

"Ju-Jewels…" Julie barely remembered her alias in time. "Mira's friend. Who...might you….be…?"

"...Dr. Clay Fermin," he said finally, sounding no less tired.

"Oh! Well, hello sir. I, uhm, it's a pleasure to meet you," Julie started to say just as Mira power walked past her father and hooked Julie's arm to drag her away.

"Come on Julie," Mira says, quickly shutting the terminal down. She doesn't even glance at her father, instead passing beside him as if nothing happened. "Thank you for helping me."

"What were you doing in the com– terminal?" Julie asks, and Mira winces at her near slip of calling the terminal a "computer". Mira is about to remark that her father is still within earshot, when Julie's wink clues her in to the situation.

Julie's pretending to not know what Mira was doing. Her father can still hear them. She's taking the blame off of her and putting it all on Mira, the person her father won't do anything against.

Mira distractedly says: "Nothing, really. Hurry up or we'll miss the start of the Tournament!", but in her mind she's seeing Julie for the first time. She had underestimated her gravely.

She's too distracted by her revelation to notice that Julie took her hand once again, dragging her out of the apartment.

"What a waste of time," Mira says, once their out of the building and she's finally snapped out of her stupor.

"I don't know about that." Julie grins, passing her bunched up jacket to Mira. "I found this in your brother's room hidden under the mattress. Please don't tell me I found his secret porn collection, or something."

Mira takes it, finding a binder full of paper. She doesn't know how much it cost her brother to buy something so expensive, but she doesn't care. She knows her brother. The only reason he would write something on paper would be to make sure nobody would find it, since you can't exactly hack paper.

It was only because of Julie following human logic that she found it.

Mira quickly ducked into an alley, dragging Julie behind her, and began to read.

She wished she hadn't.

Each word was like a knife to the heart, each comment by her brother twisted it deeper. She didn't know if she wanted to burn the files, tear them apart or keep them as a memento of how blind she had been.

"...Mira, are you ok?"

Mira furiously wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "No," she said, her voice cracking under the pressure of the knot in her throat.

"Keith, my brother, he– He helped my father! He was my father's assistant all this time! He's the one that captured Hydranoid!"

Mira releases the wordless shout of frustration that has been building in her throat.

" Him?" Gorem jumps out of Julie's pocket, landing on her shoulder with a bit more force than necessary. " He was the disgraceful Vestal that lostthe battle against Hydranoid and instead of accepting his defeat, used one of those damned contraptions to capture him?!"

Mira nods wordlessly.

"That, that–!" Julie stomps her foot on the ground, her fists clenched tight.

"Guys!" Wilda peeks out from Mira's pocket. "Remember what we're here for!"

Mira struggles to calm her temper, to let her mind do its job, but she can't help the mess of emotions buzzing under her skin.

"Thank you, Wilda," Mira says, squeezing him softly in their version of a hug.

She catches Julie's eyes, and in that instant they both make a promise:

They're going to make them pay , even if it's the last thing they do.


	12. Up on the Chopping Block

Dust rises from the battlefield as Subterra Gargonoid crashes into the ground, soon bursting into orange light and zipping away back to its minlin.

Julie flares out her cape and blows a kiss to the audience, while Gorem twirls his hammer like a baton, throwing it up in the air and catching it with ease, before returning to his ball form.

"Aaaaaaand another decisive win for the Bringers Of Ragnarok!"

The crowd's cheers rise like a storm from the bleachers while Julie waves at the audience, her smile easy and bright, playing her persona to perfection.

It wasn't hard. Ace had been very clear on how to play the crowds the way she wanted. It was easy to forget he had participated in these tournaments many times before, and had even found sponsors.

She dramatically turns and lets her platform take her away from the roaring crowds, onto blessedly stable ground. Her Gauntlet briefly blips, and Julie looks at the reminder of the directions of the break room. She reviews it one last time, and braves the cold metallic corridors that connect the arena with the backstage area.

Voices drift from a side-corridor, and Julie quickly ducks out of the way of a journalist interviewing another participant, walking away before she could get stopped for an interview too. She shakes her disappointment away. 'You'll get other interview opportunities!' she tells herself, as she power walks away from the journalist and the two girls being interviewed.

Julie sighs and knocks on the door, mourning for her lost chance at stardom, and reminds herself _why_ she's here in the first place.

As soon as she enters the break room, she huffs with annoyance. Dan and Ace are sitting in the same corner of the room with their backs to each other and arms crossed, looking like kids having a tantrum.

"Hey~ there you guys are!" She called, skipping over with a jaunty wave.

"Hey Julie…"

"Tch."

Julie didn't quite notice her friend's sour moods. "Did you guys see that battle? I had that crowd wrapped around my pinky! Though, gotta say I'm glad to be off that pillar, I think the height of it was giving me...what was it, airsickness? Is airsickness a thing?"

Gorem whispers something so quietly that not even Dan and Ace notice.

"...Vertigo! That was it." Julie said as though she thought of it herself. "It's kind of a new thing though. Do you guys think New Vestroia has different gravity, or something?"

"It does. It just depends on where exactly you are." Ace started to explain. "There are areas wh–"

"Oh here we go again." Dan huffed, dramatically leaning his head on his hand.

"...excuse me?"

"No, no, keep explaining things that need only one sentence in a whole essay, mister know-it-all." Dan waved one hand in a gesture that nearly slapped Julie in the face. "Especially if we can guess most of what you say before you say it. You haven't stopped since we barely won our last match!"

"Hey, I'm doing you both a favor!" Ace jumped up. "I don't have to explain every obvious thing to you like I'm teaching a baby, but if you're going to keep acting like one, then I'll be happy to oblige!"

Dan stood up, hands balled into fists, actually growling at Ace. Ace snarled back, baring his teeth.

The moment it looked like they were about to exchange blows, their gauntlets both beeped.

"WILL **TEAM DRAGONHEARTED** PLEASE MAKE THEIR WAY TO **ARENA DOOR 7B** IN **5 PARAXELS**?" the automated voice came from both of their gauntlets in unison. It wasn't a moment too early, and both boys checked themselves.

"You guys need to take a chill pill!" Julie put herself between the two of them. "Just calm down, put this aside, just until the mission is over. Then we'll have a whole other road trip to let it all out. Alright?"

The two boys were cowed by Julie's assertion, and nodded an mumbled something platitative. Ace gestured for Dan to follow him to the right door, and Dan shoved his hands into his pockets and followed.

Julie is alone in the locker room, watching other participants idle in the waiting room. She waits until she's sure no one's looking to type something into her Gauntlet.

The operation is go.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Runo's gauntlet beeped and Shun angrily shushed her. Baron quickly grabbed her arm and helped her set the notifications to silent and no flashing light.

"You should have done that before we left," Shun grumbled, peeking around the corner.

"Well sorry I didn't know how! I'm pretty sure you didn't turn that off either!"

"He asked me to help him!" grins Baron, finishing up with Runo's Gauntlet and instead pulling up his own. "But can you guys calm down? These types of bots are _really_ good at analyzing tone of voice. If you guys sound too much like you're going to start a fight, the bots will notice. "

Shun huffs, but still turns back to the path ahead. Runo does the same after a second. Instead she looks at the deserted courtyard, fences and checkpoints both behind them. There's a weird symbol on the floor that Baron had told them was a hover-car landing pad, and a handful of robots littered here in there in fancy-looking uniforms. A short metallic building juts out of the ground, shining with a dull metallic 's not a single person to be found.

"Alright," says Baron, drawing their attention. "See that robot over there?"

He points toward a robot posted near the door of the building, the only difference between in and the rest of the guards being a third camera set above its eys.

"That's the ID-safeguard robot. If we can get it to think we're supposed be here, we could just walk around inside without being suspicious."

"Is it really that simple?" asks Shun, distrust dripping from his voice. He glares at the robots, probably doing the ninja thing where he calculates the best way out. Whatever. None of them is not going to mess up enough to need it anyway.

(Or at least, that's what Runo hopes.)

"Yeah, the security system wasn't built thinking that a bunch of unarmed civilians was going to get this far. It's really all Mira's work, she's the one who knew where all of this was."

Shun blinks, his lips tightening into a line, but he doesn't say anything.

Baron tenses and announces: "Guys, it's showtime in three, two, one–"

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

"Go," mutters Mira, tapping the confirmation on her Gauntlet for the virus to be deployed. She hopes it will be enough to trick the bot. If she gets Baron, Shun and Runo caught captured because she forgot to type a parenthesis she would never forgive herself.

Instead she waits, as Alice gives directions to Marucho, guiding him through the vents.

"Turn right in the next one. You're facing south, right?" asks Alice, looking with concentration at the map projected in front of her, looking at the blue dot symbolizing Marucho.

"According to my Gauntlet, yes," comes Marucho's voice from the speakers, grunting with effort. "You know, these vents aren't nearly as dusty as I thought they would be."

"Gotta love that you minlin are dumb enough to make security systems that are this easy to get through!" interjects Wontu, his voice much louder than Marucho', since he's probably closer to the speaker.

"That's a bit unfair, it's not our fault we need to breathe," retorts Marucho, before he shrieks and the sound of metal hitting metal comes through the line. "...I'm in? Yeah, I made it! Wait for a second, I'll be done shortly."

"You ready for this?" says Mira, putting her hands on her hips and smiling with a confidence she doesn't feel.

Alice looks away while biting her lip. Then she takes a deep breath, her hands curling into a fists. She stares at Mira straight in her eyes, and she nods.

"Done!" says Marucho as the doors open. "I'm trying to get access to the cameras, so be careful in the meantime!"

Mira glances one last time at Alice. "It's now or never," Mira says, and both of them run forward into the metal corridors.

Alice takes the lead since she's better at reading a map than Mira is, headed directly for the central elevator.

They take a sharp turn to the left, Alice almost skidding into a wall, but she recovers quickly. The corridors don't change anything in appearance, and Mira begins to wonder if they've just been running in circles, but Alice says "this way!" and a metallic door finally appears.

Mira lunges forward, swiping her Gauntlet over the keyholder. She sighs in relief when it opens, meaning she had managed to copy the coding of her scientist-grade access pass, now that her father had _finally_ gotten around to revoking it.

Both of them stumble into the elevator, taking a second to catch their breath.

"I have access to the cameras!" announces Marucho, before a few clicks come through the line. "I've got your position and– _guys close the doors NOW_!"

Mira lunges for the touchpad and presses the button. She only gets a glance of the guard's green uniforms before the doors close soundlessly.

"That was– far too close," wheezes Alice and slides down the wall she'd been leaning onto, curling up on the floor.

"As soon as you guys get out the elevator, _run_ ," says Marucho, determination bleeding through his voice. "It should be clear if you guys go straight to the right."

Mira nods, and then realizes Marucho probably didn't see that, so she says "Got it." She then looks at Alice, and offers a hand. Alice takes it, pulling herself up to her feet.

"You alright?"

"Yeah," Alice responds, her breathing still a little too fast. "Don't worry about me."

Mira doesn't have time to answer, as the doors open at that moment, and both of them sprint to the right and through a maze of identical corridors. This time they don't so much find the door as crash into it, seemingly out of nowhere.

A wave of Mira's Gauntlet is only what's needed to open the doors, and both of them spill into the darkened room, only a terminal standing in the darkness.

"There used to be a laser field there, but I disabled it," announces Marucho, Wontu chattering about in the background. "I also granted access to both of you to the terminal. Do your thing guys!"

Both Alice and Mira nod, Wilda popping out of Mira's pocket. She takes him along with her Gauntlet and sets them on the floor, where he starts quietly conversing with Baron, Dan and Ace through a voicecall.

Mira gently touches the pad, the interface coming to life under her fingertips. She inputs the code for a second terminal to be deployed beside her, and Alice goes to work as well.

She gets lost in the task, fingers flying all over the interface, searching for the shutdown sequence for the Dimension Controller. It's not particularly difficult, just needlessly confusing, with codewords popping up around the text every other line.

"Found the deactivation for the Bakugan Containment System," says Alice, which prompts Mira to glance at her screen and raise her eyebrows in amazement and admiration.

"How did you find it?"

"I searched for Hydranoid's records and the word "monster" popped up a lot in it, so I assumed that was the codeword for Bakugan," explains Alice, tapping her terminal a few times. "Wilda, can you please tell the others that they can start taking the Bakugan out?"

"Sure," answers Wilda, and not a second later two cheers and a scolding come through the voicecall.

"I'll search for the deactivation code for Tigrerra," says Alice, and begins typing away.

Mira shakes her head, turning her attention back to her terminal, searching for the word monster. From there, it only takes a few seconds to have her own command ready.

A notification pops up, and Mira accepts the statue deactivation sequence from Alice.

She then hooks her Gauntlet into the terminal and tests out her most complex creation yet: a remote deactivation sequence for both the Dimension Controller and Tigrerra's statue, which won't get tagged by the terminal's security as a suspicious program.

"All done?" asks Alice, playing with the hem of her shirt.

"All done," responds Mira, and quickly does a last sweep, making sure there are no traces of them left behind. "We need to get out of here. Marucho?"

"On it. Go out and turn left after three corridors, then turn right at the next opportunity."

From there it's a blur of more maze-like corridors and close calls, of jumping into the elevator again and sprinting out the door out into sunlight. They still don't stop running, instead still moving until they reach a random café Mira didn't even have enough time to read the name of, and collapsing inside one of the booths.

The two girls attract a few stares for how haggard and out of breath they're behaving, but for the most part the café is packed with people watching the Alpha Tournaments on several screens scattered about the establishment.

They're given a wide berth by the staff until they calm down, Mira almost breaking into relieved giggles and Alice laughing into her hands as if crying uncontrollably.

"Hey, uh," the two looked up at an apprehensive waiter. "Can I get you two anything?"

"Oh, definitely. Three Gorund Drops and three of whatever the daily special is. And...could you maybe turn up the volume on the Tournament stream?"

"They're already at their highest volume, ma'am," the waiter sighed. Mira affirmed their order and they were left alone again.

"–Oh! An astonishing turn of events, folks! Team Dragonhearted finally seem to have overcome their differences and have defeated the Dark Angels, winning the semi-final round!"

Alice feels a tug on her sleeve. Marucho has finally arrived, looking no less worn-out than the other two.

"Oh, you're just in time!" Alice says, scooting over so he can climb onto the seat.

"With that, our next double battle will be the match you've all been waiting for: two unrevealed members of the magnificent Vexos are going to be facing Team Dragonhearted to protect their titles! We currently have a poll up on the BakuTourney app, the lucky viewers who correctly guess who will be appearing will receive exclusive signed merchandise…"

The cafe was suddenly full of ducked heads over Gauntlets and whispered conversations. Mira shrugged and opened the app on her own Gauntlet, selecting Volt and Lync at random.

"Hey, you guys have BakuTourney accounts, right?"

Marucho sighed. "Baron made me one."

"Same for me," Alice said sheepishly. "Did you want that Vexos merch, Mira?"

"Maybe," Mira said with a smile more tired yet giddy than she'd worn in years. "I just feel like we're on a winning streak right now, and I want to lie to myself and say it's going to stay that way."

"Seriously…?" Marucho deadpanned, while Alice scrolled down the advert-laden app on her Gauntlet.

"Well, don't vote if you don't want to then," Mira said, looking back to the singles match being broadcasted behind them. Julie was winning her own semifinal round, posing at the camera with a peace sign and a tongue blep that made Mira snort with laughter.

"I'll trust in luck just this once," she said, leaning back in hear chair, smiling with a jainty wave as Runo, Baron and Shun walked into the cafe. "Since just this once it's all so trivial."


End file.
